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Can Telepathy Explain? 

Results of Psychical Research 



By 

MINOT J. SAVAGE 

Author of " Life Beyond Death," " The Passing 
and the Permanent in Religion," etc. 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

SHIje Jirtkkcrbocker ^xt&a 

1903 






Copyright, 1902 

BY 

MINOT J. SAVAGE 

Published, November, igo2 
Reprinted, February, 1903 ; October, 1903 






tlbe fmtcfeerbocfeer prese, Hew JJorft 



" It " — the work of the Society for Psychi- 
cal Research — " is the most important work 
which is being done in the world — by far the 
most important." 

W. E. Gladstone. 



The above is an extract from a letter written by Mr. Glad- 
stone to the Secretary of the Society for Psychical Research 
upon being elected an honorary member of the Society. 



PREFACE 

THERE are two or three points which 
I wish the reader to have clearly in 
mind before he begins my little book. So 
I will set them down here, even at the risk 
of repeating something which is already in 
the text. Some of these concern my own 
personal point of view. The only excuse 
for referring to these is that in treating of 
matters of this sort, one needs to take ac- 
count of the "personal equation." Very 
few persons are free from bias, and I wish 
the reader to take mine into consideration. 
First. I have never called myself a spir- 
itualist. Those opposed to spiritualism 
have frequently charged me with being 
one; while, on the other hand, extreme 
believers have taken me to task for not 



vi Preface 

assuming the name. My objection to this 
is not the unpopularity of the movement. 
If I have done nothing else in my life so 
far, I think I have proved that I am not 
afraid to express my opinions. The 
word "spiritualist," as ordinarily used, 
covers a state of mind which misrepresents 
my true position. The popular movement 
called spiritualism has been marked by 
credulity, a readiness to cover up, if not 
to defend, fraud, and an enthusiasm far 
from critical. To call myself a spiritualist, 
then, would be to take a position in popu- 
lar estimation which I do not really hold. 
Secondly. I frankly confess that I am 
strongly inclined to hold the belief in 
continued personal existence as capa- 
ble of proof and in the possibility of at 
least occasional communication. I have 
been a student of these matters for 
twenty-eight years. I have believed that 
certain things were taking place which 
were worthy of the most serious study. 
But I hold that the scientific method is 



Preface vii 

the only method of knowledge. So I have 
felt that I had no right to express a cer- 
tainty in this direction until that certainty 
could be made good, after the most care- 
ful, painstaking, scientific investigation. 
I have never been able to understand how 
anyone should wish to believe that which 
is not true. I would much rather wait 
until the fact of death, and so find out as 
the result of personal experience, than to 
accept any hasty conclusions or be the 
means of misleading other people. The 
body of the book will make clear to the 
reader what my present attitude really is. 
But I consider myself bound, as an honest 
man, to hold my mind open and ready to 
accept any new conclusions which may 
come with adequate credentials. 

Third. I have added to the body of the 
book four appendices. I have believed 
that the opinions of certain prominent 
men would be at least interesting, if not 
convincing. Then it has seemed to me 
that a list of names of those who have 



viii Preface 

held these general ideas might be very 
suggestive. I have added to this a partial 
and incomplete list of books. I have 
done this as an easy way of answering 
large numbers of letters which are con- 
stantly coming to me, asking what publi- 
cations along these general lines are 
worth reading. 

At the end I have tried to suggest what 
religious and ethical ideas are generally 
held by those who believe in the spiritual 
universe and in communication between 
that and this. These are not necessarily 
my own beliefs. They are here set down 
as an answer to frequent inquiries that 
have been received. 

This little volume has grown out of a 
request on the part of the editor of Ains- 
lees Magazine for an article giving some 
of the results of psychical research. In 
preparing that article, which appeared in 
Ainslee last March, I found I had dictated 
much more than could be used in a maga- 
zine. Out of this request of the editor of 



Preface 



IX 



Ainslee has come this little book. I have 
not encumbered it with attempts to prove 
the statements of fact and the personal ex- 
periences which I have given. The reader, 
however, may rest assured that there is 
nothing in the volume which has not been 
subjected to the most rigid tests of scien- 
tific verification. 

M. J. S. 
New York, 24 October, 1902. 




CONTENTS 

:hapter page 

Introductory i 

I. The Facts not New . . 6 
II. These Facts Essential in 

All Religions ... 8 

III. Popular Attitude toward 

these Facts • . . .10 

IV. Serious Study very Recent 14 
V. Society for Psychical Re- 
search 17 

VI. The Study Growing Respect- 
able . . . .20 
VII. Time for Serious Investiga- 
tion 22 

Classes of Facts ... 26 
Clairvoyance and Clair- 

audience .... 27 

X. Raps 30 

XL Apparitions .... 36 



xii 


Contents 




CHAPTER 




PAGE 


XII. 


Voices 


49 


XIII. 


Spirit Photography . 


5i 


XIV. 


Telekinesis .... 


54 


XV. 


Levitation .... 


58 


XVI. 


Invisible Musicians 


62 


XVII. 


Communications . 


65 


XVIII. 


Typical Cases 


7i 


XIX. 


First Sitting with Mrs. 






Piper .... 


73 


XX. 


My Daughter's Experi- 






ence 


77 


XXI. 


A Young Lady Speaks Ger- 






man ..... 


79 


XXII. 


Philanthropic Work of 






"Spirits" 


82 


XXIII. 


A Prophecy .... 


9° 


XXIV. 


Reporting Unknown Facts 






by Request 


92 


XXV. 


Report about a Friend Two 






Hundred Miles away 


96 


XXVI. 


Report of Private Facts 





XXVII, 



and Mental Conditions 

at a Distance ... 99 

Report of Fact not Known 
to Any Person on Earth 105 



Contents xiii 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XXVIII. An Agnostic's Experi- 
ence .... 109 

XXIX. An " Impression " and a 
Subsequent Psychic 
Reference to it . 112 

XXX. Experiences of a Fa- 
mous Naturalist . 115 

XXXI. An Unseen Husband 
Reports Himself at 
his Wife's Request . 119 

XXXII. A "Spirit" Apology . 121 

XXXIII. Fiancee's Father 

Warned and Saved. 123 

XXXIV. Evidence for Such 

Facts Greater than 
Reported . . .126 

XXXV. Natural or Supernat- 
ural ? . . . . 129 

XXXVI. Present State of 
Thought in Regard 
to the Immortal Life 132 

XXXVII. The Poets and Immor- 
tality . . . 139 

XXXVIII. The Traditionally 

Satisfied . . . 142 



XIV 



Contents 



CHAPTER PAGE 

XXXIX. Twofold Reason for In- 
vestigation . . . 145 

XL. Nature of Facts to be 

Explained . . . 148 

XLI. The Facts Classified . 150 

XLII. The Telepathic Theory . 152 

XLIII. Telepathic Cases Spo- 
radic and Uncertain . 153 

XLIV. Telepathic Assumptions . 156 

XLV. On Telepathic Theory, 
the Sitter Ought to 
Get what he Expects 
and Has in Mind . . 158 
XLVI. Telepathy Ought not 
to Make so Many Mis- 
takes .... 160 
XLVII. Telepathy and Appari- 
tions .... 162 

XLVIII. Why Should the Sublim- 
inal Self be Such a 
Liar? .... 163 
XLIX. What Telepathy Does 

not Seem to Touch . 166 

L. The Spiritistic Theory . 168 

LI. Practical Universality 

of Spiritistic Belief . 169 



Contents xv 

CHAPTER PAGE 

LI I. Spiritism Can Explain All 

Facts . . . .172 

LIII. Spiritism and Special Prov- 
idences . . . -174 

LIV. Objections to Spiritistic 

Theory . . . .178 

LV. Are the Unexplained 

Facts Important ? . . 180 

LVI. Are the Facts Trivial ? . 183 

LVII. As to Descriptions of 

Another Life . . . 185 

LVIII. The Teaching of Spiritism 187 

LIX. Have the "Spirits" Done 

Any Good ? 188 

LX. So Many Sittings Are 

Failures .... 190 

LXI. Spiritism not Dependent 

on Theism . . . 192 

LXII. Hudson's The Law of Psy- 
chic Phenomena . .194 

LXIII. All Normal People Desire 

Continued Existence . 199 

LXIV. No Fresh Evidence likely 
Except along the Lines 
of Psychical Research . 204 



xvi Contents 

Appendix I. Some Opinions of Well- 
Known Men .... 



207 



Appendix II. A Partial List of the 
Names of Such Persons as Have 
Believed in the Existence of 
a Spiritual World and of at 
Least Occasional Communica- 
tion between that World and 
this 227 

Appendix III. A Partial List of 

Books 233 

Appendix IV. ..... 239 




CAN TELEPATHY EXPLAIN ? 



Can Telepathy Explain? 



INTRODUCTORY 

OF course no one of its members has a 
right to speak for the Society for 
Psychical Research itself as such ; and of 
course also he must speak from his own 
personal point of view. Like the British 
Association for the Advancement of Sci- 
ence, for example, this Society is organ- 
ised for a free search after the truth. It 
is committed to no theory. Among its 
members are men of the most diverse 
opinions concerning all the great depart- 
ments of human thought. Orthodox or 
heterodox in theology, evolutionist or 
i 



2 Can Telepathy Explain f 

creationist in science, materialist or ideal- 
ist in philosophy, — all are equally wel- 
come to membership if they are interested 
in the object for which the Society was 
formed ; and it goes without saying that 
no one member is in any way bound by 
the convictions of any other. 

The Society, then, as such, has no opin- 
ion. It has accepted no theory. It has 
come to no conclusion. Committees or 
individuals carry on certain experiments 
or make certain investigations, and the re- 
sults may be published in the Proceedings ; 
but these reports will naturally make very 
different impressions upon different mem- 
bers of the Society. One member, for 
example, may have had a certain kind of 
experience which will predispose him to 
accept the reports as to similar experiences 
on the part of other investigators, but the 
personal equation here counts for a great 
deal. That it is out of the ordinary re- 
quires, and ought to require, a great deal 
of proof before it is accepted by the fair- 



Can Telepathy Explain f 3 

minded seeker after truth ; and if one has 
had no personal experience in such matters, 
the reports of others naturally impress 
him as apocryphal or unreal. To illus- 
trate by a personal reference to myself. 
Some years ago an Englishman who was 
visiting Boston told me of certain things 
which he said he had seen. I doubted 
neither his intelligence nor his honesty, 
but I did not believe a word of the things 
he told me. At that time I had had no 
experiences which predisposed me to think 
that such things might be possible. If, 
however, a man has learned that a certain 
thing can happen, then he is naturally and 
properly disposed to accept as possibly 
true the reports of similar things, though 
he has no evidence beyond the testimony 
of one intelligent and fair-minded wit- 
ness. In treating, then, of the results of 
psychical research, I must speak from my 
own point of view. I am familiar with the 
work of the Society, and shall have that 
always in mind ; but my account will 



4 Can Telepathy Explain f 

naturally, and I think properly, be coloured 
by the results of my own personal investi- 
gations, as well as of those which I have 
carried on in concert with others as a part 
of the work of the Society. 

One more personal word seems to be 
needed. I have tried for a good many 
years, in my seeking after truth in all 
directions, to divest myself of prejudice. 
Perhaps no man entirely succeeds in doing 
this. I can only say that I have done my 
best. I refer to this only because the 
personal attitude of a witness is important 
to those who care to listen to what he has 
to say. I cannot understand how any 
man who is at the same time sane and 
honest should desire to believe anything 
except that which is true. However much 
I may wish that certain things may prove 
to be true, I am much more anxious not 
to be deceived myself, nor to be the 
means of deceiving anybody else. 

It is my present purpose to point out 
simply and plainly certain facts, and cer- 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 5 

tain conclusions based on those facts, 
which I have come to accept after years 
of patient study, both as a member of the 
Society for Psychical Research and in my 
own personal capacity. 




THE FACTS NOT NEW 



THE kinds of facts which constitute the 
subject-matter of the Society's in- 
vestigation are not at all new. Similar 
happenings have been reported since the 
beginning of history. The stories come 
to us from every nation and under every 
sky. We find them not only among the 
traditions of barbaric people, but gravely 
and solemnly reported by the classical 
writers of Greece and Rome. They were 
common during the Middle Ages. They 
were accepted by the leaders of the Catho- 
lic Church and the great reformers as well. 
Shakespeare and all the great writers of 
England make use of them. They were 
6 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 7 

common in all the Pilgrim and Puritan 
days of New England. They disturbed 
the pious serenity of the home of John 
Wesley, though the alleged facts are gen- 
erally put out of sight in his authorised 
biographies. They were known in the 
house of old Dr. Phelps of Connecticut, 
— the father of the late Professor Phelps 
of Andover, and the grandfather of Mrs. 
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, the author 
of Gates Ajar. Professor Phelps be- 
lieved to his dying day in the accuracy 
of the reports as to what happened in his 
father's house, though from his theologi- 
cal point of view he held firmly to the be- 
lief that they were the work of the devil. 




II 



THESE FACTS ESSENTIAL IN ALL 
RELIGIONS. 

ONE point in regard to these reported 
happenings is of the gravest im- 
portance and deserves special and careful 
attention. Reports of happenings of this 
kind are inextricably bound up with the 
origin, the contents, and the history of 
every religion on the face of the earth. 
Indeed, it is hardly too much to say that 
they are the visible roots out of which the 
religions have sprung. They are the cre- 
dentials which have been offered to au- 
thenticate all the revelations. Every 
religion is full of them ; every bible is full 
of them. In making this statement, the 



Can Telepathy Explain f 9 

Hebrew and Christian religions and bibles 
are not excepted. Apparitions, visions, 
dreams, voices, spiritual and mental ex- 
altations supposed to be connected with 
the communication of divine truth, trans- 
figurations, levitations, annunciations, 
warnings,— what are these but supposed 
facts woven into the very warp and woof 
of all the religions? They are precisely 
the same kind as those alleged facts which 
are asserted to be taking place to-day, and 
which it is the object of the Society for 
Pyschical Research to investigate. These 
alleged facts, then, are not new. Sporadic 
cases have been reported from all over the 
world and through all time. 





Ill 

POPULAR ATTITUDE TOWARD THESE 
FACTS 

WHAT, now, is the general attitude 
of people toward all these stories? 
If they are a part of the religion which a 
man has inherited, or which for any reason 
holds his allegiance, he reverently and 
unhesitatingly accepts them as true. But 
it is a little curious to note that the ad- 
herent of any particular religion, while 
accepting his own wonder stories, looks 
upon all others as strange superstitions. 
The outsider may not be able to discern 
that the evidence for any one set of them 
is any better than that for all the rest; 
but in spite of this the believer accepts 
10 



Can Telepathy Explain f 1 1 

his own, and rejects those of all other re- 
ligions. The ordinary Protestant, for ex- 
ample, has no use for any of the Catholic 
miracles, ancient or modern ; and neither 
the Protestant nor the Catholic treats with 
any intellectual respect those of the Mo- 
hammedan or the Hindu. This is one of 
the attitudes toward stories of this kind 
which all readers will readily recognise. 

On the other hand, there is the position 
ordinarily taken by the newspaper reporter 
or the common gossip of the clubs. Ac- 
counts of this sort, whether found in the 
Roman historian Livy or reported in the 
common conversation of the day, are flip- 
pantly and superciliously disposed of as 
"spook" stories, which are contemptu- 
ously set aside as not worth any serious 
attention. The man who "takes any 
stock" in them is "a fool." The general 
state of mind is well illustrated by the 
remark made to me some years ago by a 
world-famous scientist, who, as the result 
of several years of patient and persistent 



1 2 Can Telepathy Explain f 

investigation, had become a believer. He 
said to me, "I do not talk of these things 
to everybody. I used to think that any 
man who had anything to do with them 
was a fool, and, ' ' he added with an amused 
smile, "I do not enjoy being thought a 
fool." He spoke, therefore, only to those 
whose study and experience had made 
them at least sympathetic in their feeling. 
There is a third attitude toward stories 
of this sort which it is worth our while to 
note. There are people, and a good many 
of them, who in daylight and among their 
friends join in the laugh and sneer at the 
possibility of any of these things; but 
who, when they are alone or in the dark, 
acknowledge to themselves at least a seri- 
ous question as to whether there may not 
be something in them. It was Madame 
de Stael, I think, who said, "No, I do 
not believe in ghosts; but I am afraid of 
them, though." If the reader chooses, 
he may look upon cases of this sort as 
that of persons who have inherited a 



Can Telepathy Explain f 13 

strain of unreasonable superstition which 
they have not yet outgrown. The only 
point I have in mind is to note this atti- 
tude as a fact. 





..." -j. 



^jgSyytSi^ 



*>>-yi r . 



IV 



SERIOUS STUDY VERY RECENT 



THESE three positions, then, which I 
have thus outlined and illustrated, 
practically exhaust the points of view from 
which these asserted happenings have been 
regarded up to the present time. It is, I 
think, a somewhat strange and startling 
fact to note that so far in the history of 
the world, with the exception of a few 
individuals, no serious attempt has ever 
been made to study these alleged phe- 
nomena and find out what they may mean, 
until the date of the organisation of the 
Society for Psychical Research. Hardly 
any other class of supposed facts has had 
such an important bearing on the history 
14 



Can Telepathy Explain f 1 5 

of mankind as has this; and yet, as I have 
said, it never seems to have occurred to 
the world that they were worthy of serious 
and patient study. Such things cropping 
out under every sky, in every nation, 
woven into every religion, touching the 
inner life of almost every family, would 
seem to indicate something in human na- 
ture that is at least of sufficient account 
to merit investigation. It is not entirely 
a pleasant view of human history to sup- 
pose that the world has been crazy until 
the advent of modern science ; and yet 
this is substantially the attitude which the 
ordinary physical scientist is apt to take. 
The reader will seriously accept state- 
ments of Livy in regard to almost any- 
thing else ; but the minute he alludes to 
a matter of this sort, with an incredulous 
smile it is put one side. The plea I make 
is that the mere putting it one side is 
not quite sufficient. If only a few people 
had had things of this sort to report, then 
this might seem a satisfactory way of 



1 6 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

disposing of their statements. But there 
are too many of them. They are too 
common, too characteristic of human 
nature to be lightly dealt with. They 
seem to imply some characteristic of 
human nature that is essential and uni- 
versal; and if for nothing else than that 
human nature be understood, they would 
seem to be worth looking into. 




V 

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

THE Society for Psychical Research 
was organised in England in the 
year 1882. Its first president was Pro- 
fessor H. Sidgwick of Cambridge. It is 
well known that he is one of the great 
ethical writers of the age. He challenged 
the common-sense, the intellect, and the 
scientific knowledge of England by the 
statement that it was a "scandal" that 
such alleged facts should go so long with- 
out any serious attempt at investigation. 
He was president of the Society from 
1882 to 1884. He was followed by Pro- 
fessor Balfour Stewart, F.R.S., who held 
the position from 1885 to 1887. Then 
17 



1 8 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

from 1888 to 1892 Sidgwick again took 
the presidency. In the year 1893, the 
Rt. Hon. A. J. Balfour, M.P., F.R.S., 
was president. He was succeeded by 
Professor William James of Harvard for 
the years 1894 and 1895. From 1896 to 
1899, the position was held by Sir William 
Crookes, F.R.S., the inventor of the fam- 
ous Crookes tube, which was the step- 
ping-stone to the discovery of the X-rays. 
During the year 1900, Frederick W. H. 
Myers held the presidency. He was one 
of the keenest and best-known essayists, 
and famous as a psychologist. He died 
last year. He is the author of an article 
on "Science and Immortality " which has 
produced a wide impression both in Eng- 
land and in this country. He left in 
manuscript an important work on "Per- 
sonality," which will deal at length with 
the psychical side of the problem. The 
present president is Dr. Oliver Lodge, 
F.R.S., a prominent member of the Brit- 
ish Association for the Advancement of 



Can Telepathy Explain? 19 

Science. These men are mentioned as 
indicating the kind of persons in England 
who have been willing to enter upon this 
work. The Society in this country was 
organised in 1885. After a time it was 
found better to make the American So- 
ciety a branch of the English so as to give 
its members the advantage of the work 
done on the other side of the sea. 




VI 



THE STUDY GROWING RESPECTABLE 



SINCE men like these have undertaken 
the work, it has been elevated to a 
position of respectability which up to 
that time did not attach to it. Until this 
Society was organised, the man who pro- 
posed to study in this direction was likely 
to be looked upon with suspicion as not 
entirely well-balanced. This feeling was 
well expressed by Professor James of 
Harvard in a remark which he made to 
me. He said, "Well, Savage, suppose 
you and I should come to believe in it. 
It would only be a couple more cranks." 
This was the way the matter was looked 
on ; but one of the first, and as a pre- 
20 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 21 

liminary one of the most important results 
of the Society so far has been to make 
the study respectable, as I have already 
said. Under the shadow of these great 
names a man can look into these things 
without having his sanity impeached. 
"Good society," to be sure, has as yet no 
place for it, and one's friends may regard 
him with a tolerant smile; but he can 
investigate as much as he pleases now, 
without being regarded as anything more 
than "peculiar." 





VII 

TIME FOR SERIOUS INVESTIGATION 

AFTER all that has been so far said, it 
would seem reasonable to take the 
position that the time has come when this 
whole matter needs to be looked into. 
Enough has been discovered to be true 
to make one thing, at least, clear: If the 
issue shall not be that we know, or are 
likely to know, any more about any other 
world, it has become fairly plain that we 
are likely to learn some very important 
things about this world. If we are not 
able to settle the question as to whether 
the human mind can exist without the 
present visible body, we have certainly 
made some remarkable discoveries as to 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 23 

the powers of the mind as at present em- 
bodied. And while men are spending 
years in dredging the bottom of the sea, 
or studying the remains of extinct animals 
as discovered in the rocks, or photograph- 
ing and classifying the stars, or giving 
their lives to the investigation of insects 
(and against all this, of course, no one has 
anything to say), it would seem to be 
equally important to know as much as pos- 
sible about ourselves ; and up to within the 
last few years, the brain and the mind have 
been the darkest of all dark continents. 

There is another reason why these mat- 
ters should be studied. There are thou- 
sands of people in the modern world, to 
speak within limits, who are accepting re- 
ports of these stories as true, and who are 
shaping their lives by the beliefs which 
are connected with them. It seems to 
me clear that the matter involved compels 
us to choose one of two alternatives. 
We are here face to face with the great- 
est truth of the universe or else with the 



24 Can Telepathy Explain f 

most lamentable delusion, — one or the 
other; and I for one cannot conceive that 
there is any other problem more import- 
ant to be decided upon. If the world is 
being deluded, competent investigation 
ought to settle the matter and help the 
great wondering masses out of their delu- 
sion. If there is a great truth here which 
abolishes death, which wipes away all 
tears, which heals the broken-hearted, 
which puts meaning into life, which makes 
all the long and toilsome process through 
which we are passing worth while, then 
surely that is something which ought to 
be known. 

There is another point which religious 
believers especially may well take to 
heart. In the minds of thousands of 
people in the modern world, the Bible 
stories of what is called "the super- 
natural " have come to be looked upon as 
a mass of discredited traditions. If these 
things which we are discussing shall ever 
be popularly accepted as in the main true, 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 25 

one effect will be to rehabilitate the Bible. 
By this I do not mean that it will re- 
establish faith in the supernatural. I do 
not like, and do not use the word "su- 
pernatural." It seems to me that what- 
ever is may be regarded as a part of the 
great scheme of nature. I prefer to fol- 
low the usage of the Reports of the 
Society for Psychical Research, and refer 
to these things as "supernormal." They 
are different from, and one side of, the 
ordinary happenings of life, but they are 
not therefore necessarily out of the sum- 
total of what we express under the word 
"nature." Neither do I mean that the 
acceptance of these things as true will 
establish the infallibility of the Bible. 
But it will make it more reasonable for us 
to believe that a large number of these 
things happened as they are recorded, or 
that there is at least a kernel of truth at the 
heart of the traditions, though they may 
have become exaggerated and distorted 
in passing from one reporter to another. 



VIII 



CLASSES OF FACTS 



I NOW proceed to enumerate certain 
classes of what I believe to be facts, 
which have been investigated by the So- 
ciety, or which I have thoroughly investi- 
gated on my own account. 




26 



IX 

CLAIRVOYANCE AND CLAIRAUDIENCE 

BECAUSE they seem to be so closely 
akin, I will mention clairvoyance 
and clairaudience together. It is not 
strange that these words are looked upon 
with suspicion, in view of the fact that 
there are persons who advertise the pos- 
session of these powers as a business, and 
who seem to place them on a level with 
the cheapest kind of fortune-telling. But 
any one who has carefully studied the 
matter is aware of the fact that such 
powers as go by the names of clairvoy- 
ance and clairaudience do actually exist. 
As to what the explanation of these facts 
may be, no one, I suppose, is as yet in a 
27 



28 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

condition to determine. Every one who 
is familiar with these matters is aware 
that visions and voices both may be mere 
hallucinations. It is not this kind of 
phenomena that I have in mind. I refer 
rather to those cases where persons do 
really see without the ordinary use of the 
eyes, and hear without the ordinary use 
of the ears. For example, to make the 
matter specific and concrete, I know of a 
woman who, lying in her bed and being 
perfectly blind, sees people coming on 
the street, and tells her friends about 
them, saying that when they call, she 
either does or does not wish a personal 
interview. Cases like this are repeatedly 
verified. This same woman will take a 
sealed letter in her hands, or perhaps hold 
it above her head, and read the contents. 
In some cases this is not telepathy, be- 
cause the contents of the letter are such 
as nobody on the face of the earth is 
familiar with. Special experiments to 
determine this latter point have been car- 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 29 

ried out, and the results have been success- 
ful. Similar things are true concerning 
clairaudience; but these matters need not 
be gone into in further detail. 




X 



RAPS 



THIS is one of the earliest and com- 
monest of all the phenomena 
associated in the popular mind with "spir- 
itualistic " claims. They are frequently 
referred to in the most slighting manner, 
and are supposed to be beneath the dig- 
nity of spirtis. How it happens that 
those who contemptuously repudiate the 
spiritistic hypothesis in all its forms 
should happen to be so familiar with what 
is appropriate to the dignified action of 
inhabitants of the other world, does not 
appear. If John Smith or George Wash- 
ington or Queen Victoria while in this 
world wished to enter the room of a 
30 



Can Telepathy Explain f 3 1 

friend, it was not considered beneath 
their dignity to tap on the door. The 
most august presiding officers of import- 
ant assemblies do not consider it beneath 
their dignity to rap with the gavel in 
order to attract attention. If in any of 
these cases there were nothing but raps, 
then the fact might be open to objection. 
But it seems to be the simplest and most 
natural method of announcing one's pre- 
sence in this world ; and why it may not 
be as simple and natural in the case of 
some invisible person who wishes to make 
his presence known I have never been 
able clearly to understand. That these 
raps do occur, everybody knows. I am 
aware of the fact that they are commonly 
believed to be the result of some sort of 
trick. It has been solemnly asserted in 
some quarters that mediums have been 
known to produce these effects by some 
remarkable activity of their toe-joints. 
All this may be, and I do not care to argue 
in regard to the matter, beyond making 



32 Can Telepathy Explain f 

the statement that the method of produc- 
ing these sounds is not so interesting to 
me as the fact of the intelligence which 
they display. If toe-joints can accurately 
answer questions concerning matters 
which the owner of the said joints has 
had no way of knowing anything about, 
then it seems to me even more remark- 
able than the theory which it is thus as- 
sumed to explain. In more than one 
instance I have been told in this way a 
great many things about friends no longer 
living in the body, which I am perfectly 
certain the psychic did not know, and by 
no possibility ever could have known. 
So this fact must take its place along with 
a great many others as one of those which 
seems to me to deserve a more acceptable 
explanation than it has thus far popularly 
received. 

Some years ago, when I was living in 
Boston, I had been preaching in the city 
of Washington. On my way home I 
called with a note of introduction upon a 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 33 

New York lady. She had been a noted 
psychic, but had married, and was living 
a quiet family life at .this time. It was 
known, however, that she would some- 
times sit to please a personal friend. I 
had never seen her before, and though 
she knew who I was, she had no way of 
being acquainted with my friends. I was 
received in the back parlour. We had 
conversed a few moments when raps 
began to be heard, apparently on the 
floor, on the walls, on the table, and in 
different parts of the room. A carpenter 
was at work on a conservatory leading out 
of this back parlour, so the lady suggested 
that we go to a quieter place in the front 
of the house. She sat in a low rocking- 
chair on one side of the ro.om, while I sat 
on the other, with the centre table be- 
tween us. She suggested that I take 
some note-paper and a pencil and try 
some experiments to see if I could get 
into communication with the supposed 
author of the raps. I sat where she could 



34 Can Telepathy Explain f 

not see what I was writing. She told me 
to write down the names of a lot of per- 
sons, living or dead, but somewhere 
among them to include the name of some 
friend who might be supposed to wish to 
communicate with me. I wrote a dozen 
or twenty names. I had hardly written 
the first letter of the name of a friend 
who had died within a few months, when 
instantly three raps were heard. Follow- 
ing this method, I wrote down names of 
places, when the raps again indicated to 
me the place where this friend had died. 
In this way fact after fact was communi- 
cated, which the psychic could have had 
no possible way of knowing. This may 
serve as a specimen of what purports to 
be communication by means of raps. I 
have had equally inexplicable experiences 
with a good many other psychics, and 
through the following of very different 
methods. The only point of import- 
ance to be noted is that these raps are 
under the control of some intelligence, 



Can Telepathy Explain? 35 

and communicate things which the person 
through whom the raps are produced, or, 
if you will, by whom they are produced, 
could never have known. 




XI 

APPARITIONS 

THE history of the world is full of re- 
ported apparitions, or ghosts. Do 
such things as ghosts exist? I am per- 
fectly certain that they do. This does 
not mean that I am ready to explain their 
origin or nature. I simply recognise the 
fact. To illustrate one very important 
distinction, let me recall to the reader's 
mind the generally accepted theory of 
vision. The seeing of a chair, for in- 
stance, is supposed to coincide with cer- 
tain molecular movements of the particles 
of the brain. In seeing the same chair, 
it is supposed that these brain movements 
are always substantially the same. If 
36 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 37 

now, as the result of some stimulus or 
suggestion, the brain particles should fall 
into this special relation to each other, it 
is supposed that the subject would see 
the chair whether it was really there or 
not. Every student of the effects of 
fever or Indian hemp or opium knows 
that the great majority of visions are 
purely subjective. Some men have the 
power voluntarily to produce a vision 
that seems to them external to them- 
selves. It is said that there are those 
who can call up a favourite picture and 
seem to place it on the wall as though it 
were an objective fact, and look at and 
enjoy it. Such imaginative power, how- 
ever, I suppose, is very rare. The point 
to be kept in mind is only this, — that 
most of the visions which people see do 
not represent any real objective fact. To 
make my position perfectly clear, let me 
say this: If, at the present moment, I 
should suddenly see before me the form 
of some friend who has died, however 



38 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

real it might appear to be, I should as- 
sume that it was simply subjective, — this 
in case I were the only one seeing it. 
But if there were other persons in the 
room, and without any hint or suggestion 
on my part they also should see it, then 
the chances would become very great that 
it was some actual thing, and not an hal- 
lucination. To recur to the illustration 
of the chair once more. It is conceivable 
that the brain particles might fall into 
such relation to each other as would pro- 
duce in my case the vision of the chair; 
but that the brain particles of three or 
four other people in the room should sud- 
denly assume identical positions without 
any objective cause, — this is to suppose a 
case in which the chances would be thou- 
sands to one against its happening. But 
there are instances proved as true beyond 
any reasonable question, where the ghostly 
vision has been what is called "veridical." 
There has been satisfactory evidence that 
it represented some objective reality. I 



Can Telepathy Explain? 39 

know of cases proved beyond question 
where there has been the appearance of a 
form corresponding to the time of the 
death of a friend, this death being en- 
tirely unexpected. One case of this sort 
would naturally be disposed of as a coin- 
cidence merely. Two, or three, or four 
cases might be regarded in a similar way. 
But after a sufficient number of them the 
coincidence theory breaks down and be- 
comes less probable than the supposition 
that there was a real apparition which co- 
incided with the fact of death. In a good 
many reported cases the fact of death is 
made clear in some way beyond the mere 
coming of the apparition itself. 

I have among my notes a case which 
occurred some years ago in the State of 
Maine. Two sisters were living in sepa- 
rate towns a good many miles apart. 
One of them was in poor health, and did 
not expect to recover. She had pro- 
mised, in case she passed away, that if 
it were possible she would announce the 



40 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

fact to her sister. One evening in the 
winter, about nine o'clock, this sister, who 
was well, went to the room where her 
daughters were sleeping, waked them up, 
and said, "Your aunt is dead. She has 
just appeared to me and announced the 
fact." The family lived several miles 
from the post-office, and the snow was 
deep, so that it was a day or two before 
any news was received. When it did 
come, however, it announced the fact 
that the sister in question had died at the 
time when the apparition had been seen. 

I will not trouble the reader with specific 
proofs of the cases which I present, 
though I have them in such shape as 
would make them good evidence in a 
court of justice. 

Another case of which I have authentic 
record seems to me somewhat remarkable. 
There was a certain judge living in a cer- 
tain town in the State of Florida. He 
had no children of his own, but made a 
great pet of the two-or-three-year-old 



Can Telepathy Explain? 41 

little boy of an intimate friend. The 
judge had not been well, but no appre- 
hension was felt regarding his condition. 
One evening the little boy had been put 
to bed and was asleep. The father and 
mother heard him crying and went in to 
find out what was the matter. They 
found him sitting up in his bed and sob- 
bing as though some dreadful thing had 
happened. When they could quiet him 
sufficiently to get an explanation, he 
said, "Judge Blank says he is dead. He 
has been here and told me that he is 
dead." The parents, of course, naturally 
took this to be only a bad dream ; but 
the next morning it was found that the 
judge had died at the hour when the little 
child had been wakened from his sleep. 

It is well known that at the time of 
death it is common for those who are 
passing through this experience to see 
visions of those who have preceded them. 
I have known and made record of a great 
many cases of this kind, but generally 



42 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

there is no way of proving that they are 
anything but subjective. Now and then, 
however, there are conditions which seem 
to point to another explanation. In a 
city not far from Boston, a little girl nine 
years of age was dying. She had been 
talking with her father and mother, and 
had been saying that she wanted such a 
little friend to have some one of her play- 
things, and another another. Among 
these playmates was a little girl named 
Jenny, about her own age. She had 
specified such things as she wished Jenny 
to have as keepsakes. Then, as she be- 
gan to sink, she called out that she saw 
the faces of friends, one after another; 
grandpa and grandma appeared ; and then, 
starting with sudden surprise, she turned 
to her father and said, "Why, papa, why 
did n't you tell me that Jenny had gone? 
Here is Jenny, come to meet me." She 
had had no idea that there was anything 
the matter with Jenny; but as a matter 
of fact she had died only a little while 



Can Telepathy Explain f 43 

before. They had scrupulously kept this 
fact from the little girl for fear that the 
knowledge of it might have a depressing 
effect upon her. It seems to me that in 
this case there is an element which is of 
unusual and apparently evidential value. 
There was every reason why she might 
have imagined she saw her grandfather 
and grandmother ; but there was no reason 
for her imagining that she should see 
Jenny, and the fact that she had just left 
things for her and the surprise of her ex- 
clamation shows that it was something 
not to be accounted for in the ordinary 
way. 

There is one other case which is of a 
very extraordinary kind. It occurred 
about a couple of years ago here in the 
immediate vicinity of New York. There 
was a certain young man who had been 
studying abroad. He had been at Hei- 
delberg University. He was of anything 
but an imaginative temperament. Tall 
and stalwart in build, he had a reputation 



44 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

as an athlete. His favourite studies were 
mathematical, physical, and electrical. He 
had returned home from abroad, and 
so far as anybody knew was in perfect 
health. He was at the summer home of 
his mother. It was his habit after dinner 
to go out on the piazza and walk up and 
down while smoking his pipe. One even- 
ing he came quietly in, and without talk- 
ing with anybody went up to bed. The 
next morning he went into his mother's 
room before she was up, and laid his hand 
on her cheek in order quietly to awaken 
her. Then he said: "Mother, I have 
something very sad to tell you. You 
must brace yourself and be strong to bear 
it." Of course she was startled, and 
asked him what he was talking about. 
He said : "Mother, I mean just what I am 
saying. I am going to die, and very 
soon." When his mother, shocked and 
troubled, pressed him for an explanation, 
he said : "Last night, when I was walking 
up and down the piazza smoking, a spirit 



Can Telepathy Explain f 45 

appeared and walked up and down by my 
side. I have received my call, and am 
going to die. ' ' The mother, of course, was 
seriously troubled, and wondered whether 
anything might be the matter with him. 
She therefore sent for the doctor and told 
him the story. The doctor made a care- 
ful examination, said there was nothing 
the matter, treated the whole thing as a 
bad dream or an hallucination, told them 
to pay no attention to it, and said that 
within a few days they would be laughing 
at themselves for letting such a thing 
worry them. The next morning the 
young man did not seem quite as well as 
usual, and the doctor was sent for a 
second time. Again he said there was 
nothing the matter, and tried to laugh 
them out of their fears. The third morn- 
ing the young man appeared in still 
poorer condition, and the third time the 
physician was summoned. He now dis- 
covered a case of appendicitis. The 
young man was operated on and died in 



46 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

a couple of days. From the time of the 
vision until his death not more than five 
days had gone by. Some time after this 
experience the mother visited a psychic 
here in New York. She made no pre- 
vious appointment, but went as a perfect 
stranger and waited her turn. The son 
claimed at once to be present, and told 
his mother a whole series of very remark- 
able things, which by no possibility could 
the psychic ever have known. Then, in 
answer to the question, "Who was it that 
you saw that night? " (the question being 
purposely so framed as not to seem to 
refer to anybody out of the body) he 
at once replied: "It was my father." 
The father had been dead for some 
years, and the mother had been married 

again. 

There is one other "ghost story" to 
which I will refer. A young lady parish- 
ioner of mine in Boston some years ago 
was sitting at her piano musing and play- 
ing one Sunday in the early evening. 



Can Telepathy Explain f 47 

The family were all out, and even the 
servants were not in the house. Her pet 
dog was lying on a chair beside her. As 
she sat at the piano, her back was toward 
the front of the house and the door lead- 
ing into the hall. Her attention was 
attracted by the action and attitude of the 
dog. He started up, the hair bristled 
upon his back, and he began to growl, 
looking all the time toward the front of 
the house. Upon noticing this, she 
turned to find out what it was that had 
alarmed her pet. Then she saw the shad- 
owy outlines of three figures in the front 
parlour and near the door leading into the 
hall. She thought she recognised one of 
them before they faded and disappeared. 
Meantime the dog had become so alarmed 
that he had hidden himself under the 
sofa, from which place of refuge he was 
induced to come only after a great deal of 
effort on his mistress's part. The signifi- 
cance of this incident lies in the fact that 
there was apparently something there 



48 Can Telepathy Explain 9 

which the animal could see before his 
mistress discovered it, and without any 
suggestion from any ordinary human 
source. 




XII 

VOICES 

VOICES have been heard which corre- 
sponded to the cry of some distant 
friend in cases of distress or at some great 
crisis of experience. Stories of this sort, 
as everybody knows, have been told by 
novelists. Charlotte Bronte gives us an 
instance of it in Jane Eyre. Her heroine 
hears the cry of Rochester, and it is made 
the turning-point in one part of the book. 
If one does not know that such things can 
happen, he regards it merely as the in- 
vention of the writer; but I am familiar 
with facts in this direction, so that I know 
that such things do occur. A cry has 
been heard from the State of Indiana to 
49 



50 Can Telepathy Explain f 

Michigan, preceding a telegraphic mes- 
sage which called one friend to another in 
a time of peculiar distress. It was found 
afterwards that the definite words of the 
call which were uttered aloud in Indiana 
corresponded precisely to those which 
were heard some hundreds of miles away. 




XIII 

SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY 

I WISH to say a few words here con- 
cerning the much - discussed and 
generally flouted matter of spirit photo- 
graphy. I use the word "spirit " here, 
not as begging the question, but merely to 
express what is popularly meant by the 
term. I have had no personal experience 
in matters of this sort, and consequently 
have no opinion on the subject, which is 
not of great importance. Alfred Russell 
Wallace, the great scientist, who shares 
with Darwin the honour of an independ- 
ent discovery of the principle of natural 
selection, told me that he had carried on 
investigations in this direction, covering 
5r 



52 Can Telepathy Explain f 

several months. He had a friend as the 
photographer, and made his studies in a 
private house. As one result, he said 
that he had obtained a perfectly recognis- 
able likeness of his own mother, which 
was entirely different from any photo- 
graph ever taken of her during life, and 
which, therefore, could not have been a 
fraudulent copy of any portrait in exist- 
ence. I refer to the matter now, not to 
raise any claim that these things are true, 
but merely to say that granting the exist- 
ence of an objective ghost or spirit form, 
it is scientifically possible to photograph 
it. This could be done even in the case 
of a form not visible to the eyes of any 
person present. The sensitive photo- 
graphic plate can see better than we can. 
Everyone knows that it is possible to 
photograph invisible stars. The X-rays 
are making us familiar with what would 
have seemed impossible in the way of 
seeing. It is said that sometimes the 
name of a ship which has been painted 



Can Telepathy Explain? 53 

over and is invisible to ordinary eyes will 
come out in a photograph; so "spirit" 
photography is not a matter to be treated 
with simple superciliousness, but, like a 
good many other obscure problems, is to 
be studied to find out "whether these 
things are so," 










^^Vt^a ^ir 



XIV 



TELEKINESIS 



TELEKINESIS is the technical term 
which psychical researchers have 
agreed to use as covering cases of the 
movement of physical objects which seem 
to require as explanation some force other 
than muscular, or, indeed, any kind which 
is ordinarily recognised by science. I 
wish to give a few specimens of this kind 
of phenomena which have come under my 
own observation. When I was quite a 
boy, the movement called "spiritualism " 
was felt in the little town in Maine where 
I was born. Seances and circles were quite 
common. Most of them, so far as my 
observation went, were merely expressions 
54 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 55 

of curiosity, and many of them were con- 
ducted in no serious spirit. At that time 
table movements were common, even in 
the presence of many people who did not 
regard themselves as mediums. Indeed, 
there was a small light stand in the house 
which would move, and go through many 
varieties of exercise, alone with myself. 
As I touched my fingers lightly on the 
top of it and appealed to any supposed 
spirits who might be present to manifest 
themselves, the table would follow me 
about the room or lift one leg and rap on 
the uncarpeted floor in answer to ques- 
tions. In the presence of my brother also 
I saw table movements which not only 
could not be accounted for by ordinary 
muscular pressure, but were precisely 
opposite to the movements which would 
naturally have been produced by such 
muscular pressure as there was. I did not 
carry the matter far enough to come to 
any serious conclusion. As I grew older 
and came under the dominating- influence 



56 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

of the religious ideas in which I was 
trained, I came to regard the whole mat- 
ter as uncanny, and possibly evil, so that 
later, as a young minister, I denounced 
the whole business, preaching against it 
with vigour proportioned only to my pro- 
found ignorance of the whole matter. I 
have noticed that this is not an uncom- 
mon procedure not only on the part of 
young and inexperienced ministers but 
sometimes also in the case of those who are 
older and ought to know better. Since 
I began the serious study of the subject 
in later years, I have seen every phase of 
this kind of manifestation. I have known 
time after time of tables being lifted into 
the air when there was no visible explana- 
tion save that the tips of certain fingers 
were touching their tops. These things 
have occurred not in darkness, but in 
light, and so many times that there is no 
sort of question on the part of those who 
have had experience that such things do 
really take place. But this is not all. I 



Can Telepathy Explain f 57 

have seen physical objects move in broad 
daylight, without the visible contact of 
any human hands or the presence of any 
other force known and recognised by 
science. 




XV 

LEVITATION 

1COME now to notice another pheno- 
menon which, while akin to these, is 
sufficiently distinct and unique to merit 
notice by itself. This is the fact of levita- 
tion. The orthodox Christian world is 
accustomed to accept this unquestion- 
ingly when asserted to have taken place 
in regard to the Christ. They as un- 
questioningly reject it when it is asserted 
as true concerning some of the Catholic 
mystics and saints during the Middle 
Ages. It is testified to as having oc- 
curred in the case of Home, by such a 
number and character of witnesses as 
would establish beyond question any 
58 



Can Telepathy Explain f 59 

other kind of fact. Men have been im- 
prisoned for life or put to death on far 
less weighty evidence. I find no fault 
with this, because abnormal facts, even 
though they be found to be demonstrated 
at last, at first demand and ought to re- 
quire an amount of evidence proportioned 
to the degree of their strangeness. I 
suppose it will be admitted by every 
thoughtful reader that if any physical 
object whatever, however small, can be 
lifted into the air or moved from one 
place to another by a force so far not 
scientifically recognised, it would be the- 
oretically possible to lift objects, however 
weighty, or to sustain the human body 
itself in the air. In other words, if there 
are any degrees of difficulty in a matter 
like this, we do not know what they are. 
It merely depends upon the amount of 
force which is at work. I have seen 
tables and chairs lifted in a way not to 
be explained by any ordinary methods, 
and this a good many times. On one 



60 Can Telepathy Explain f 

occasion, when seated in a heavy arm-chair, 
I was myself gently and quietly lifted into 
the air while a skeptical friend looked 
on and carefully studied what was taking 
place. The only possible connection with 
any human agency was in the fact that 
the psychic laid his hand on the back of 
the chair and raised it as the chair itself 
was lifted. It would have been beyond 
the limits of the strength of the psychic 
to have done this, even though he had 
stooped and grasped the chair with both 
his hands. How it was accomplished I 
do not undertake to say. I simply note 
the fact as a contribution to this discus- 
sion. It certainly is something that needs 
to be explained. The late Rev. O. B. 
Frothingham was widely known as an ex- 
ponent of the most liberal theological 
ideas. He was a keen thinker and bril- 
liant speaker. His prejudices were strong 
against what is known as "spiritualism." 
During the later years of his life he had 
little hope of personal immortality. I 



Can Telepathy Explain f 6 1 

speak of these things only to show that 
his prejudices were not in favour of the 
reality of any occult phenomena; and yet 
he told me one day of an experience which 
was a most remarkable illustration of the 
exercise of some power which needs to be 
explained. It occurred in the city of New 
York. He said that he and six other men 
sat upon the top of a large square piano, 
while it was lifted into the air. The only 
visible cause lay in the fact that a delicate 
woman touched the top of the piano with 
her fingers. I should be very skeptical of 
stories like this, even from so clear-headed 
an observer as Mr. Frothingham, did I 
not know that similar things had taken 
place on other occasions. 




XVI 

INVISIBLE MUSICIANS 

I NOW come to note a fact more re- 
markable still, if, indeed, there are 
degrees of strangeness connected with this 
class of occurrences, all of which are over 
the border-line of the common. Years 
ago I was told of musical instruments 
having been played on without the con- 
tact of any visible fingers. I looked upon 
all such reports with the same kind of in- 
credulity that is natural on the part of a 
person who has had no similar experience. 
I was somewhat shaken in my conviction 
that these things were impossible when I 
read the volume of Sir William Crookes. 
In this little book, the famous scientist 
62 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 63 

details at length, and with illustrations, 
his experiments with Home. He devised 
mechanical contrivances so that he might 
test the question as to whether there was 
any force manifested in the presence of 
Home that could not be accounted for in 
the light of any generally accepted theory. 
Mechanical instruments .are not liable to 
emotional extravagances; and so I felt 
that Crookes's statements were not easily 
to be contravened by one who knew no- 
thing about the matter. He told of an 
accordeon being played on under con- 
ditions which necessitated some other 
explanation than that of its being man- 
ipulated by visible human hands. Not a 
great while after reading this book, I had 
an opportunity to witness a similar phe- 
nomenon. A common accordeon was 
held in the air by one hand, that hand 
clasping the side of the instrument oppos- 
ite to that to which the keys were at- 
tached, and thus suspended in the air, 
long tunes were played upon the instru- 



64 Can Telepathy Explain f 

ment. It was pulled out and pushed in 
as when handled by an ordinary player; 
but there was no visible hand touching 
the keys. All this was in broad daylight 
in a large open room at ten o'clock in the 
morning. 




XVII 

COMMUNICATIONS 

I NOW pass to a class of facts which are 
generally treated under the head of 
"mediumistic phenomena," and which it 
is claimed by many involve communica- 
tions from invisible intelligences. The 
physical manifestations to which I have 
been referring are generally spoken of as 
belonging to a lower order than those that 
are not included under this term. I con- 
fess I have never been quite able to see 
the importance of the distinction, because 
the physical phenomena which I have wit- 
nessed have always been accompanied 
by, and under the direction of the most 
65 



66 Can Telepathy Explain f 

clearly manifested intelligence. That, 
however, only by the way. 

These communications known as "me- 
diumistic phenomena" come in various 
ways. Sometimes it is through the use 
of raps. Again it is by lifting, tilting, or 
in various ways the moving of tables, — 
perhaps the lifting of one leg and rapping 
it upon the floor. These movements are 
always in accord with some previously 
arranged method. Sometimes they come 
through what are called inspirational ut- 
terances. Again they are by means of 
automatic writing, and the psychic, at 
the time the writing is going on, may be 
in his or her normal condition, or partially 
or completely in a trance. I have seen 
the writing a good many times when there 
was nothing abnormal visible save that 
the hand was seized and apparently used 
as an instrument for the writing, without 
any conscious will on the part of the 
agent. While this writing is going on, 
the psychic may be engaged in conversa- 



Can Telepathy Explain? 67 

tion on some indifferent topic. This is 
done at times on purpose to divert the 
conscious intelligence from what is going 
on. In the case of the late Stainton- 
Moses, the hand would be writing while 
the owner of the hand was engaged in the 
task of reading Plato in the original Greek, 
on purpose to separate as widely as pos- 
sible his own mental activities from the 
work in which his hand was engaged. 
Sometimes, though not generally, so far 
as my own experience is concerned, the 
handwriting resembles that of the claimed 
communicator. Most commonly, how- 
ever, it does not, and this would be the 
more likely even though one accepted the 
spiritistic theory as to what was going on ; 
for if any person in the flesh should take 
hold of the hand of another and try to 
write with it, the chances are that there 
would be quite a marked divergence from 
his ordinary chirography. One peculiarity 
of this writing, as manifested in some in- 
stances at least, is worthy of note. I have 



68 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

seen cases where, when the communicator 
claimed to be a man, the writing would 
be the large, dashing business hand, 
though the agent at the time was a wo- 
man. Again, at the same sitting, when 
some elderly lady claimed to be the in- 
visible agent at work, the penmanship 
would be set down slowly and with diffi- 
culty and in a fine, lady-like hand. Then 
there is the writing by means of plan- 
chette. There are the messages spelled 
out by means of the Ouija board. Be- 
sides these methods there is perhaps the 
most common one of the psychic speaking 
while in a trance. This, some years ago, 
was the ordinary method of Mrs. Piper. 
In later years, however, the work has been 
done by the hand in writing, while she 
has been in a dead trance. In one or two 
cases, at least (I am not quite sure as to 
how many), both of Mrs. Piper's hands 
have been influenced at the same time, 
and apparently by two different and very 
distinct intelligences. 



Can Telepathy Explain f 69 

Another phase of this alleged commun- 
ication is by the method of slate-writing. 
I have made a careful study of this matter, 
have caught a good many tricksters at 
their work, am perfectly aware that there 
are several methods which might deceive 
the unwary but which are wholly fraud- 
ulent. I could myself give a successful 
slate-writing sitting to a person unfamiliar 
with these matters. In spite of all this, 
however, I have received slate-writing 
communications which were perfectly in- 
telligible and relevant to the matters in 
hand, where the tricks, if tricks they 
were, were such as I have been utterly 
unable to discover. Indeed, on one oc- 
casion, in the presence of a psychic sitting 
at the same table with me, I got a mes- 
sage on my own slate while holding it in 
my own hand, and without its having been 
touched by the psychic, and without his 
having his hand anywhere near it while 
the alleged writing was going on. I make 
no special claim for this, because I am 



yo Can Telepathy Explain ? 

aware of the difficulties connected with 
this method, and do not claim to have 
exhausted all the resources of sleight-of- 
hand as they might bear upon the matter. 




XVIII 

TYPICAL CASES 

I WISH now to detail as briefly as pos- 
sible, and yet with some clearness, a 
considerable number of typical cases. My 
purpose in this is to place the intelligent 
reader in such a position that he may be 
able to make up his own mind as to what 
theory seems best fitted to account for 
the facts. The two theories which at 
present are rivals in the field will be pre- 
sented and dealt with after the cases are 
outlined. 

I prefer to deal chiefly with such occur- 
rences as I have been personally familiar 
with. Almost all of them find their 
parallels in the published Proceedings of 
71 



72 Can Telepathy Explain f 



the Society for Psychical Research ; but 
in detailing cases which I have personally 
known there are two advantages. First, 
they are, of course, fresher and more vivid 
in my recollection ; and, secondly, they 
will serve the purpose of reinforcing and 
confirming the observations and experi- 
ences of others which have been already 
published. 




XIX 

FIRST SITTING WITH MRS. PIPER 

I HAD sittings with Mrs. Piper years 
ago, before the Society was organised 
or her name was publicly known. On the 
occasion of my first visit to her, she was, 
I think, in a little house on Pinckney 
Street in Boston. At this time she went 
into a trance, but talked instead of writ- 
ing. The first person who claimed to be 
present was my father. He had died in 
Maine at the age of ninety. He had 
never lived in Boston, nor, indeed, had he 
visited there for a great many years, so 
that there was no possibility that Mrs. 
Piper should ever have seen him and no 
likelihood of her having known anything 

73 



74 Can Telepathy Explain? 

about him. She described him at once 
with accuracy, pointing out certain pecu- 
liarities which the ordinary observer, even 
if he had ever seen him, would not have 
been likely to notice. Without any ques- 
tion on my part, she told me that it was 
my father, and added: "He calls you 
Judson." This, though a little fact, is 
striking enough to call for notice. Jud- 
son is my middle name. It had been 
given me when I was born, at the request 
of my father's daughter, a half-sister. 
She, however, had died suddenly in 
another State, and had never seen me. 
In all my boyhood all the members of 
the family except my father and my half- 
brother, soon to be referred to, had al- 
ways called me Minot. Father had called 
me Judson through my boyhood, as I 
always supposed, out of a tender feeling 
for the daughter who had given me the 
name. For fifteen or twenty years, how- 
ever, before his death he had fallen into 
the family way and had also called me 



Can Telepathy Explain f 75 

Minot. It struck me, then, as peculiar 
and worthy of note that Mrs. Piper 
should actually describe him, and, among 
other personal peculiarities which she 
mentioned, should have called up this 
tiny fact from the oblivion of the past. 
She went on to say: "Here is somebody 
else besides your father. It is your 
brother, — no, your half-brother, and he 
says his name is John " This John was 
my mother's boy. Then Mrs. Piper went 
on to describe with somewhat painful ac- 
curacy, partly in pantomime and partly 
by speech, the method of his death ; and 
she added: "When he was dying, how he 
did want to see his mother! " Now this 
half-brother John had also been in the 
habit of calling me Judson in the years 
long past. It had been a good many 
years since I had seen him. He had 
never lived in Boston, and there is no 
conceivable way by which Mrs. Piper 
could have known anything about him. 
He was not consciously in my mind, and 



J6 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

I was not expecting to hear from him. 
He had died a year or two before this in 
Michigan, in precisely the way in which 
the medium had described the facts. As 
to his exclamation about his mother, it 
came to me as peculiarly personal and 
appropriate, because he was one of those 
who would be spoken of as a "mother- 
boy." He was passionately devoted to 
her. 




M 



xx 

MY DAUGHTER'S EXPERIENCE 

RS. PIPER moved from the west 
end of Boston to a house in Rox- 
bury. My daughter made an engagement 
for a sitting with her. She did this 
through a friend who was living in Rox- 
bury, having this friend write the letter 
making the appointment, and having the 
reply come to her house under an assumed 
name, at least two miles away from where 
I was living then. My daughter went to 
meet the appointment, of course utterly 
unknown. A friend gave her three locks 
of hair. She placed them in a book, one 
at the front, one at the back, and one in 
the middle, so that they should not come 
77 



78 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

in contact with each other. She knew 
nothing about them, not even as to 
whether they had been cut from the heads 
of people living or dead. After Mrs. Piper 
had gone into a trance, these locks of hair 
were placed in her hand, one after an- 
other. She told all about them, gave the 
names, the name of the friend who had 
asked my daughter to bring them, told 
whose heads they were from, whether 
they were dead or living, and in regard to 
one of them asked why they had cut it 
off at the extreme end of the hair where 
it was lifeless, instead of taking a lock 
nearer the head. My daughter of course 
did not know whether any of the names 
given or the statements made were correct 
or not. She made notes, however, and 
found that Mrs. Piper had been accurate 
in every particular. 



XXI 

A YOUNG LADY SPEAKS GERMAN 

I HAVE a lady friend who was the 
daughter of a New England clergy- 
man, and whose husband in later years 
was also a minister. When she was a girl 
this mediumistic power, whatever it may 
be, would take possession of her, not only 
without her will, but sometimes against 
it. She never sat for pay, but would oc- 
casionally oblige a friend who desired to 
witness experiences of this sort. One 
day, a young German, apparently a "gen- 
tleman," whom she had never seen before, 
came and begged of her to give him a 
sitting. He said he had heard of her 
79 



80 Can Telepathy Explain f 

power, and had a very important reason 
for his request. She consented, and 
among other things, began, as she sup- 
posed, to jabber in the use of sounds 
which to her were without any meaning. 
When the influence had left her, she felt 
troubled and ashamed, and was going to 
apologise by explaining that she had 
seemed forced to utter these sounds and 
was not able to control herself. The 
young German told her she need not 
apologise or explain. He said she had 
rendered him an incalculable service. He 
assured her that she had been speaking 
German, that his father had been talk- 
ing to him. Then he went on to ex- 
plain that this father had died suddenly, 
leaving his business affairs entangled so 
that they were utterly unable to straighten 
them out. He needed certain infor- 
mation which he had no way of obtain- 
ing. This, he said, his father had now 
given him through her, and that the 
matter was perfectly plain. He wanted 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 8 1 

to pay her liberally for the service,, 
but she declined. He afterwards sent 
her a valuable present as an expression 
of his gratitude. 

6 




XXII 



PHILANTHROPIC WORK OF "SPIRITS 



1NOW come to refer to a class of ex- 
periences of the most remarkable sort. 
To go into this with sufficient detail to 
make the whole matter perfectly clear 
would necessitate the writing of a small 
volume. A few years ago there was a 
famous preacher to the poor in the city 
of Boston. He and his wife both were 
particularly interested in those who had 
few other friends. They used to refer to 
these people as ''my poor." In the old 
age of this minister he had a colleague. 
Both he and his colleague were intensely 
orthodox in their views, and naturally 
had nothing whatever to do with occult 
82 



Can Telepathy Explain f 83 

phenomena. After the minister's death, 
his former parishioners, these poor people, 
were naturally scattered in different parts 
of the city. Some of them in course of 
time moved to the suburbs and even to 
other towns farther away. It is a com- 
mon objection brought against these mani- 
festations that they seem matters only to 
interest the curious, and never show an 
interest in any serious work of any kind. 
Now come some hints as to the nature of 
certain extraordinary facts. I asked the 
privilege of writing a small book detailing 
many of these experiences at length some 
years ago, but received a message, pur- 
porting to come from the other side, for- 
bidding my doing it. The reason given 
was that it would call attention to what 
was going on and interfere with the work. 
The work referred to was like this. For 
a series of years a loving labour of charity 
and help was carried on, involving no 
glory, no notoriety, no publicity, but the 
opposite. It cost effort and money to 



84 Can Telepathy Explain f 

carry on this work, and nobody but two 
or three intimate friends were ever let 
into the secret. The widow of the col- 
league of this old clergyman was the 
"medium." She had never herself seen 
a medium in her life. She had had no- 
thing whatever to do with ordinary spirit- 
ualism, did not believe in it, and in fact 
was opposed to it. She was, and is still, 
if living, not only orthodox, but intensely 
religious in her feelings. Such, then, was 
the situation. This old clergyman and 
his wife were the claimed agents in the 
unseen, who spoke through this widow of 
his former colleague, and made her their 
agent in their charitable undertakings. 
She lived in a town not far from the city 
of Boston. She would receive orders to 
go into town to such a street and such a 
number, and would be told that there she 
would find such and such person or per- 
sons in such or such a condition, and she 
was to render them the service that was 
needed. Cases like this occurred over 



Can Telepathy Explain f 85 

and over again. She would follow these 
directions, knowing absolutely nothing 
about the case except that which had thus 
been told her, and she said that there was 
never a mistake made. She always found 
the person and the condition as they had 
been described to her, and she did for 
them what their case required. In one 
instance she travelled to a city in another 
State under orders like these, knowing not 
even the name of the person she was to 
seek out, except that which had been told 
her. She found the case, however, as it 
had been reported, and rendered the 
called-for assistance. Not all of these 
were cases of mere physical need. Some 
of them were instances of rescue from 
moral peril, the description of which 
would read like a chapter in a sensational 
story. 

As a part of this general ministry, 
another happening is worthy of record. 
The daughter of this old minister received 
explicit orders, claiming to come from her 



86 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

father and through his colleague's widow 
as the medium, to enclose twenty dollars 
in an envelope and send it to another 
town, directing it to an address of which 
she had never heard. She hesitated about 
sending the money in this way, and 
wanted to wait and get a check so as to 
avoid risk of loss. She was peremptorily 
ordered, however, not to wait, as the 
matter was one of immediate and vital 
importance. She sent the money as thus 
directed, two ten-dollar bills. I have had 
the privilege of reading the letter acknow- 
ledging its receipt. It was written with 
difficulty and the use of a lead pencil, and 
the grammar and spelling were poor. 
One could, however, almost hear the drip 
of tears as he read it. It told the story 
of abuse and desertion on the part of her 
husband. The forsaken wife had done 
all she could to keep her little family to- 
gether. She had reached the end of the 
endeavour, had just pawned her last bit 
of decent furniture, and with the proceeds 



Can Telepathy Explain f 87 

had bought some charcoal and was making 
preparations to go out of the world and 
take her children with her, when the money 
arrived. 

There is one other incident in the life 
of this minister's daughter that is import- 
ant enough to set down, although it is 
not connected with this particular work. 
This lady lived at the South End in Bos- 
ton. She had a friend, a wealthy widow, 
living at the Back Bay. This widow was 
known to a few intimates as possessing 
psychic sensitiveness, so that she herself 
received what she claimed to be commun- 
ications from the other world. One of 
those commonly communicating was the 
old minister I have referred to, the father 
of the friend living at the South End. 
One day there came a note from Beacon 
Street asking her friend to come and dine 
with her on the following Monday, as she 
had many things which she wished to talk 
over. The South End lady, when she 
read the note, said to herself: "It is 



88 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

impossible for me to go, for I have an en- 
gagement in another direction at that 
time." And then the thought coming 
into her mind, she said to herself: "Now, 
if father does really communicate with this 
friend, why cannot he tell her that I am 
engaged next Monday. If he only would, 
it would be quite a satisfactory test." 
Then the matter passed from her mind. 
The next morning before breakfast she 
wrote a letter explaining the situation, 
and gave it to the postman when he called 
with the mail about eight o'clock. Now, 
it is possible that this letter might have 
reached Beacon Street in the twelve 
o'clock delivery, though, from my experi- 
ence of years with the postal authorities 
in Boston, I should say that the proba- 
bilities are that it would not arrive before 
three; but that is of no consequence. 
Between nine and ten that same morning, 
the coachman of the friend in Beacon 
Street appeared with a note which said : 
"You need not take the trouble to answer 



Can Telepathy Exp lam ? 89 

my invitation, for your father has been 
here and has told me that you are engaged 
next Monday and so cannot dine with 
me." 




'"VjNls 




dssKj^ 




£&»&&i?^ S^?$§p&$P (3*1^ 


ts^ r 



XXIII 

A PROPHECY 

HERE is a little circumstance which 
has about it one feature which is 
somewhat unique and so makes it worthy 
of attention. I was sitting with a friend 
in my study in Boston. This friend was 
one of my parishioners, and not a public 
medium. Indeed, not all of her friends 
and relatives knew that any of these things 
occurred in her presence. Generally, the 
phenomena taking place when she was 
with me were in the nature of table move- 
ments and automatic writing. On this 
occasion, however, she went into a trance. 
Her first husband claimed to be present 
and speaking through her. I had never 
90 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 91 

known anything about him, so that the 
messages delivered were for her and not 
for me. There were a great many, most 
interesting, and of different kinds. For a 
special purpose, I select, however, only 
this one. He said: "You tell her for me 
that that friend she is expecting to visit 
her from New York will come on Satur- 
day " ; and then he added: "She won't 
believe that." After she came out of the 
trance I told her, and she said : "Of course, 
I don't believe it. It must be a mistake. 
I know it is not true. I have just had a 
letter from this friend, and she is not 
coming until next Monday." The day 
of this sitting was Wednesday. I knew 
nothing about either friend or proposed 
visit. At the end of the sitting she went 
home, and I thought nothing more about 
the matter. On Friday, however, I re- 
ceived a note from her saying: "I have 
just got a letter from my friend in New 
York, and she has changed all her plans 
and is coming to-morrow." 



XXIV 

REPORTING UNKNOWN FACTS BY 
REQUEST 

NOW comes a new variation of these 
singular experiences. I received a 
letter some years ago from a clerk in a 
business house in a city about twenty 
miles from Boston. He said that he had 
found himself under the influence of some 
power that wished to write through his 
hand. He knew nothing about these 
matters, and wished to call on me and let 
me see the writing, and give him my ad- 
vice. He was an entire stranger to me. I 
set a date for him and he called at my 
study. This was in my church in Boston 
and at a distance of ten minutes' walk 
92 



Can Telepathy Explain f 93 

from my house. He came ; we sat down 
at the table, and immediately his hand 
was seized and began to write with a 
good deal of power. The name signed 
to the "communications" was that of 
George Canning. I thought I would 
try to find out who this George Canning 
claimed to be. I therefore asked him 
who he was, and he said: "I used to live 
in Philadelphia. I was a contemporary 
of Girard." He stated quite a number 
of facts concerning himself, some of 
which I was able to look up and verify. 
Concerning others, I could not find out. 
So far as I know, however, the state- 
ments he made were correct. Then it 
occurred to me to try an individual test. 
I said: "If you are really a person and 
are really here, you ought to be able to 
go somewhere in the city for me, find 
out something at my request, return, and 
tell me about it. Can you do it?" He 
replied: "I have never attempted any- 
thing of the sort, but do not see why I 



94 Can Telepathy Explain 9 

should not. ' ' He then said he would try. 
I asked him to go to my house, find out 
whether Mrs. Savage was at home ; if she 
was, in what part of the house she was, 
and what she was doing, and come back 
and tell me about it. She had told me 
explicitly before I left that she had a good 
many outside things to attend to, and ex- 
pected to be away from the house all the 
morning. Naturally, therefore, I men- 
tally placed her anywhere else except at 
home. This statement is made as bearing 
on the theory of telepathy, and because 
it is frequently asserted that you get in 
these messages the things you were ex- 
pecting to receive. We sat in perfect 
quiet and silence for four or five minutes. 
At the end of that time, the hand again 
began to write. I said: "Well, what did 
you find ? ' ' To my surprise, and of course 
I believed that he was all wrong, he said : 
"Mrs. Savage was at home, and when I 
was there, she was standing in the front 
hall saying good-bye to a caller." When 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 95 

I got home at one o'clock for lunch, I 
asked her where she had been, and she 
answered me with a touch of disappoint- 
ment and disgust that she had been 
flooded with callers all the morning, and 
had been utterly unable to get away and 
do the things that she had planned to ac- 
complish. Upon comparing notes, I 
found that at the precise minute referred 
to, she had been just where the intelli- 
gence calling himself Canning had said 
she was, and had been saying good-bye to 
a caller who had stayed so long that she 
was particularly gratified at seeing her 
leave. 




XXV 

REPORT ABOUT A FRIEND TWO HUNDRED 
MILES AWAY 

I HAVE already stated one case in 
which the invisible intelligence acts 
at my request to find out something and 
report to me. I wish now to give another 
illustration of the same kind, only more 
remarkable still. I was sitting with a 
friend in my study in Boston. This 
friend, though having psychic sensitive- 
ness, was not in a professional sense a 
medium. She did not go into a trance, but 
was in her normal condition. The com- 
munications were made chiefly through 
automatic writing. The intelligence at 
work claimed to be the spirit of a friend 
96 



Can Telepathy Explain 9 97 

of mine who had recently died, but who 
during her life had lived in a town on the 
Kennebec River in Maine. She had a 
sister still living in this same town. It 
occurred to me to make this test, and I 
explained what it was which I wanted. I 
asked her if she knew where her sister was 
at the time. She answered that she did 
not, and had no way of knowing, unless 
she could go or send and find out. I 
then asked her if. she would not try to find 
out for me while I waited. The answer 
being in the affirmative, we sat in perfect 
silence and quiet for nearly fifteen min- 
utes, when the influence appeared again 
and the hand began to write. She said 
she had been to Maine, and told me 
distinctly and clearly where the sister was, 
and what she was doing. And here let 
me ask careful attention to the fact that 
there were conditions in the family with 
which I was acquainted, which led me to 
believe that the sister at this time would 
probably be in another town ; so that the 



98 Can Telepathy Explain f 

answer was directly opposed to my ex- 
pectation. It seems to me that this has a 
bearing on the theory of telepathy as ex- 
plaining matters of this kind. I immedi- 
ately wrote a letter to Maine, and had the 
correctness of the statement made to me 
corroborated in every particular by return 
mail. 




XXVI 

REPORT OF PRIVATE FACTS AND MENTAL 
CONDITIONS AT A DISTANCE 

I WAS sitting again in my study with this 
same friend, a psychic. Two pages 
of note-paper were written over automatic- 
ally while the psychic and I were carry- 
ing on an indifferent conversation upon 
general matters. I took up the notes and 
said at once to myself, — I did not speak 
aloud, — "If it were possible, I would take 
my oath that this was a note written by 
a friend who has died this year." It had 
all the characteristic marks of such letters 
as I used to receive from her while she 
was living. It was not signed, however. 
I then said out loud : "Will not the person 

09 



ioo Can Telepathy Explain f 

who is writing this give her name ? ' ' Im- 
mediately the name was given, — the 
maiden name and then the married name. 
I then began an hour's conversation which 
was carried on as definitely and intelli- 
gently as it would have been had she been 
present in the body. I asked the ques- 
tions out loud, and the answers were given 
either through preconcerted movements 
of the table or by automatic writing. We 
went into details of family life. We dis- 
cussed books in which we had been inter- 
ested when we were both young. She 
gave me the name of one poem which 
used to be a favourite with us both. In 
short, the conversation was a perfectly 
natural and simple one, such as might 
have been carried on between .any two 
friends. When it was ended, however, I 
said to myself; "She has not told me any- 
thing which I did not know, and so pos- 
sibly it might all be explained by the 
theory of mind-reading or telepathy." 
I did not know how, and so far as my ex- 



Can Telepathy Explain ? ioi 

perience and reading go, nobody else as yet 
knows how, but I assumed that it might 
be possible that the psychic could, in 
some inexplicable fashion, tap the sources 
of my information and give me back again 
what I had unconsciously in the first place 
given to her. Let this theory be stretched 
to the utmost and made the most of. It 
is important to remember, however, that 
at the time this sitting began, the psychic 
did not know that such a person as the 
friend who claimed to be present had 
ever existed in the universe; so that any 
knowledge, latent or otherwise, on her 
part, must be left out of account. This 
communication was followed by several 
others of a still more remarkable nature, 
claiming to come from the same source. 
I was holding sittings with this friend once 
a week. 

Soon after this, at the very beginning 
of our sitting, this same friend claimed 
to be present, and at once began to tell 
me of mental experiences and sufferings 



102 Can Telepathy Explain f 

through which her sister in Maine was 
at that time passing. The psychic knew 
nothing whatever of this sister, and I 
was entirely ignorant of the existence 
of the troubles referred to. The com- 
municator, calling her sister by name, 
said : "She is passing through the greatest 
sorrow of her life. I wish I could make 
her know that I care. I wish you would 
write to her for me." When I asked her 
the nature of the trouble, there was a dis- 
tinct and definite hesitancy about reply- 
ing. The impression made on me was 
that I was treading on delicate ground, 
and that the question was being considered 
as to whether I had better be told. At 
last, as though no other way out of it was 
seen, she told me that the difficulty was 
caused by the unfaithfulness and cruelty 
of her sister's husband. I had never seen 
this husband but once, and had no way 
of knowing that the marriage was not 
perfectly happy. I wrote a letter of in- 
quiry, however, asking whether any special 



Can Telepathy Explain f 103 

trouble existed, and if the nature of it 
was such as to make it possible for me to 
be told what it was. I received a letter 
by return mail, confirming every word 
that had been told me, and begging me 
that the letter might be burned as soon 
as it was read. 

In this letter there was a little human 
touch that impressed me a good deal. 
What claimed to be the sister in the in- 
visible had said; "I wish I could make 
her know that I care." In the letter 
received from Maine, there was the 
same human feeling out after sympathy 
which had appeared on the invisible side. 
She wrote: "When my sister was alive I 
had someone to whom I could go in my 
troubles. Now I am all alone." I con- 
fess that this attempting to bridge the 
gulf by these corresponding outreachings 
for human sympathy seems to me most 
natural and very expressive. The pe- 
culiarity of this experience lies in the fact 
that here the intelligence in Boston, which 



104 Can Telepathy Explain f 

has shown itself capable of telling where 
a person is and what she is doing two 
hundred miles away, now reaches beyond 
the external physical facts, and gets at the 
existence of secret sorrows of the heart 
and comes and tells me of them in the 
most natural and simple way in the world. 
And these were precisely such things as 
this friend would have come to me with 
had she been living and able to do so. 
At the same time, let me repeat, they 
were things of which the psychic by no 
possibility could have known anything, 
and which were so far beyond anything 
that I should have even dreamed or 
guessed, that they came to me with a 
great shock, not only of sorrow, but of 
surprise. 




XXVII 

REPORT OF FACT NOT KNOWN TO ANY 
PERSON ON EARTH 

I AM now to detail a little experience 
which seems to me to have about it 
certain features which are very unusual, 
and therefore worthy of special remark. 
Never in my life, until my son died did 
I attempt to get into communication 
with any special person at any sitting 
held with any medium. I have always 
taken the attitude of a student trying 
to solve the general problem involved. 
On two or three occasions, however, 
within the last two years, I have tried to 
see if I could get anything that appeared 
to be a message from my boy. He died 
105 



106 Can Telepathy Explain f 

three years ago last June at the age of 
thirty-one. I was having a sitting with 
Mrs. Piper. My boy claimed to be pre- 
sent. Excluding for the moment all other 
things, I wish definitely to outline this 
one little experience. At the time of his 
death, he was occupying a room with a 
medical student and an old personal 
friend, on Joy Street in Boston. He had 
moved there from a room he occupied on 
Beacon Street since I had visited him, so 
that I never had been in the Joy Street 
room. I knew nothing about it whatever, 
and could not even have guessed as to any- 
thing concerning it which he might say. 
He said: "Papa [and this with a great 
deal of earnestness], I want you to go at 
once to my room. Look in my drawer, 
and you will find there a lot of loose 
papers. Among them are some which I 
wish you to take and destroy at once." 
He would not be satisfied until I had 
promised to do this. Mrs. Piper, re- 
member, was in a dead trance at the time, 



Can Telepathy Explain f 107 

and her hand was writing. She had no 
personal acquaintance with my son, and 
so far as I know had never seen him. I 
submit that this reference to loose notes 
and papers which for some unknown rea- 
son he was anxious to have destroyed is 
something which would be beyond the 
range of guesswork even had Mrs. Piper 
been conscious. Though my boy and I 
had been intimate heart friends all his 
life, this request was utterly inexplicable 
to me. It did not even enter into my 
mind to give a wild guess as to what he 
meant, or why he wanted this thing done. 
I went, however, to his room, searched his 
drawer, gathered up all the loose papers, 
looked through them, and at once saw 
the meaning and importance of what he 
had asked me to do. There were things 
there which he had jotted down and 
trusted to the privacy of his drawer which 
he would not have had made public for the 
world. I will not, of course, violate his 
privacy by detailing what they were. I 



108 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

will simply say that his anxiety in regard 
to them was entirely justified. Perhaps 
somebody wiser than I could explain to 
me how Mrs. Piper should have come into 
possession of this knowledge. 




XXVIII 

AN AGNOSTIC'S EXPERIENCE 

I HAVE a friend living in the West who 
for years had been a convinced agnos- 
tic. He was a man of wide reading and 
had great natural ability. His wife, who 
was known in the editorial and literary 
world, shared with him his philosophical 
and religious opinions ; but in some un- 
accountable fashion she had been seized 
with an impulse which she could not ex- 
plain, and had become an automatic writer. 
She was receiving the most puzzling and 
perplexing communications, but for a long 
time kept the fact from her husband, be- 
cause of his known antipathy to every- 
thing of the kind. One morning, how- 
109 



1 10 Can Telepathy Explain f 

ever, she was sitting at one desk at work 
while her husband in the same room 
was sitting at another. Suddenly her 
hand was seized and wrote, "I want to 
speak to — " naming her husband's name 
in full. This was insisted upon until she 
saw no way out of it but to tell him. what 
had occurred. He came over to his wife's 
desk and looked at the writing, and then 
said : "Well, if you are here, tell me where 
I saw you last." The answer came 
promptly: "On such a day, — day of the 
month, day of the week, — on such a street 
corner, in such a section of the city," and 
the additional remark was made that it 
was raining. The wife smiled and said : 
"I imagine that is a mistake, for you are 
not usually in that part of the city at that 
hour in the day, and would not have been 
likely to be there if it had been storming." 
The husband, however, smiled, and re- 
marked that the statement was correct. 
Then the communicator went on to say 
that he wished his old friend to render 



Can Telepathy Explain f 1 1 1 

him an important service. He detailed 
how his daughter had married against his 
wish, and how as a result of it he had left 
her out of his will. He declared that he 
had come to know certain facts which 
led him to believe that he had done his 
daughter an injustice, and he was anxious 
to set matters right. He wanted this 
friend to tell his children in regard to his 
wishes and have matters changed. Now 
this friend to whom the communication 
came was entirely unacquainted with most 
of the important facts which were com- 
municated, and the wife through whom 
the communication came was ignorant 
of the whole matter. Neither of them at 
the time was in any abnormal condition ; 
only the hand of the wife was used as a 
medium of communication. 




XXIX 

AN "IMPRESSION" AND A SUBSEQUENT 
PSYCHIC REFERENCE TO IT 

THERE was a lady living in this city 
who had an old friend in Brooklyn. 
This friend had been ill for a year or two. 
It was known that she would probably not 
recover, but there was no indication that 
the end was very near. The New York 
friend had visited the Brooklyn one on a 
certain day, and they had talked over all 
sorts of affairs, even her approaching de- 
parture, for she had no fear of death and 
talked about it as simply as she did about 
other things. The next day the New 
York lady was sitting in her room reading 
a book. Suddenly the impression came 

112 



Can Telepathy Explain 9 113 

upon her in the most overwhelming way 
that this Brooklyn friend was in the room. 
It was not a visible presence that was 
thought of, but an unaccountable impres- 
sion of a spiritual apparition. Nothing 
was seen, but the feeling was so strong 
that the book was dropped in her lap, and 
she sat for some time wondering what it 
all meant : for she was not at the time 
thinking of this friend, being absorbed in 
her reading, and she had never had such an 
experience as this before and has never had 
one like it since. She put the matter one 
side after a little while and went on with her 
reading, thinking it was one of those un- 
accountable impressions which sometimes 
come to people, but which have no par- 
ticular meaning. She was somewhat 
startled, however, to find, as soon as the 
news could reach her, that her friend had 
died a few minutes before the time that 
she dropped her book in her lap. At a 
sitting with a psychic not long after this, 
the Brooklyn friend claimed to be present 



1 14 Can Telepathy Explain 9 

and told her that she made the definite 
attempt to let her know of her death by 
coming to her in her room. This infor- 
mation was imparted without any ques- 
tion or suggestion on the lady's part that 
could have given the medium any clue to 
what had taken place. At another sit- 
ting, this same Brooklyn friend claimed to 
be present, and told about certain things — 
personal mementos — that she wished her 
New York friend to have as keepsakes. 
She also referred to drives which they had 
taken together in Brooklyn years before, 
and mentioned the name of the horse, 
which was a great pet of hers, that they 
had used on those occasions. This name 
the New York lady had forgotten, if she 
ever knew it, and only found out that the 
communication was correct by asking the 
husband about it. 




XXX 

EXPERIENCES OF A FAMOUS NATURALIST 

YEARS ago, a world-famous natural- 
ist came to Boston and delivered a 
course of lectures before the Lowell Insti- 
tute. He had been trained in his youth 
as a clergyman of the Church of England. 
He told me that in his early life he had 
looked upon all these matters with con- 
tempt, but had been startled into making 
them a study by some personal experience. 
The result of it was that he and other 
friends organised a circle composed of 
sixteen people. They held sittings every 
week when they were in London, during 
a period of seven years. There was no 
one possessing mediumistic powers in this 
115 



1 1 6 Can Telepathy Explain f 

circle at the time when they began their 
sittings, but as they went on, psychic 
powers of every description were devel- 
oped within the limits of their own mem- 
bership. Among these sixteen are the 
names of people known all over the world, 
and who would be readily recognised if I 
should mention them. It would seem like 
a chapter out of the Arabian Nights if I 
should detail the things which this natur- 
alist told me as having occurred at their 
sittings. What I have said is only an 
explanatory introduction to one little inci- 
dent which I wish to detail. This natur- 
alist himself became an automatic writer. 
One member of the circle had a brother 
who was an officer in the army. They 
had talked over these things, and the 
brother had promised that if he died first 
he would try, if possible, to communicate. 
This gentleman came into the private 
room of the naturalist one day, and said, 
"I wish you would see if you can get any 
writing." He did not feel like it, but as 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 117 

a matter of accommodation sat down and 
took paper and pen. Pretty soon his 
hand began to move, made certain mean- 
ingless scrawls at first, and then began 
to string letters together in the form of 
words. As, however, he looked on what 
he had written, it seemed to him without 
any meaning. He told me that if they 
were words at all, they were not words 
in any language with which he was ac- 
quainted. The friend asked him what he 
had obtained, and he remarked carelessly : 
"Oh, nothing! It 's nonsense; at any 
rate, it has no meaning to me." Where- 
upon the friend himself came and looked 
over the paper, and started with surprise. 
He said: "Perhaps it has no meaning for 
you, but it has all the meaning in the 
world for me." And then he explained 
that this brother, who at this time was 
dead, had made up certain words out of 
his own head. They were not words in 
any language, but they were arbitrary 
arrangements of letters which appeared 



1 1 8 Can Telepathy Explain? 

like words. He had given these to his 
brother, and had said: "If I can ever 
come to you, I will bring these as a test. 
If I do not bring them, you need not be- 
lieve that it is I." And here the natur- 
alist, in absolute ignorance of these facts, 
had reproduced the identical combinations 
of letters which the officer long before 
had made as a proposed test for his 
brother. 




XXXI 

AN UNSEEN HUSBAND REPORTS HIMSELF 
AT HIS WIFE'S REQUEST 

THERE is a lady living in a small town 
in the northwestern part of the State 
of New York. Her husband died a few 
years ago. On one occasion she had a 
sitting with Mrs. Piper, but did not get 
results which were wholly satisfactory to 
her. About a year ago, on the occasion 
of some anniversary — whether of his birth 
or their wedding I do not know — she 
went to the cemetery to place on his grave 
some flowers of a special kind of which he 
had been fond. Suddenly, and to her 
great surprise, she felt a vivid impression 
of his presence. It was so marked that 
119 



I 20 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

she spoke to him as if he were there. 
Then she said: "If you really are here, 
you go straight to Dr. Hodgson, through 
Mrs. Piper, and tell him so. Tell him 
what I am doing. Do this as a test, so 
that I may know." It happened that at 
this very hour Dr. Hodgson was having 
a sitting at Arlington Heights with Mrs. 
Piper. Into the midst of the sitting, 
breaking into the communication that 
was supposedly being received from some 
other source, this personality came. He 
detailed at length and in particular the 
fact that he had just been to his wife's 
home, had found her at the cemetery 
placing flowers on his grave. He told 
what these flowers were, and said: "She 
has begged me to come and tell you about 
it as a test, and I am here." Careful 
note was made of these facts, and as soon 
as communication could be made by mail, 
they were verified in every particular. 



XXXII 

A "spirit" apology 

ONE more brief case. Some years 
ago my brother had a sitting with 
Mrs. Piper. To him at that sitting 
claimed to come the spirit of a minister 
whom he had known in the West. This 
minister told him a good many personal 
facts, among others, where he had died 
and the disease which had taken him 
away. Of these things my brother was 
ignorant. So far as I know, Mrs. Piper 
had never had any way of knowing that 
there was such a minister in America. 
The particular point of the communica- 
tion, however, was this. He had made 
a violent attack in a Western paper on 

121 



1 2 2 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

me, in regard to some theological position 
which I had taken. He told my brother 
that he had rendered me an injustice, that 
he wished to apologise, and that he now 
believed that I was right. Now the strik- 
ing thing about this lies in the fact that 
my brother was not thinking of this mat- 
ter and cared nothing about it. The 
attack had never seriously troubled me, 
because long ago I had become used to 
worse things than that. There was no 
reason for the explanation unless it be 
found in the simple human feeling on his 
part that he had discovered that he had 
been guilty of an injustice, and wished, 
so far as possible, to make reparation, and 
this for the peace of his own mind. 





XXXIII 

fiancee's father warned and saved 

AN English girl was engaged to be 
married to a young American who 
had been a student abroad. They had 
met at Heidelberg. He died suddenly 
after returning to this country. ** She 
came over here shortly afterward to visit 
his mother. While in New York, she 
went to a medium. There was no ap- 
pointment beforehand, and there was no 
way by which the psychic could know 
who she was. Taking her turn, she sat 
down by the medium, who went into a 
trance and began to speak. Immediately 
the girl's lover claimed to be present. 
He told her a number of things which 
123 



124 Can Telepathy Explain? 

only they two had ever known. He re- 
called circumstances connected with their 
acquaintance abroad. Now, it so hap- 
pened that this young lady's father was 
an English officer in the war in South 
Africa. Among other things which the 
young man told was this. He said : "I 
am glad that I have been able to save 
your father's life once or twice during the 
past summer." Now comes the strange 
coincidence, if coincidence only it be. 
The father writes home from South 
Africa, being entirely ignorant of all that 
had taken place here, and relates what 
seems to him a somewhat remarkable fact. 
He tells how he was sitting in his tent 
one day when there came upon him sud- 
denly an unaccountable impression that 
he was in danger. It was as though 
someone was trying to make him feel this 
and induce him to move. So strong was 
the feeling that he got up and went over 
to the other side of his tent. He had 
hardly done this before a shell struck the 



Can Telepathy Explain? 125 

chair where he had been sitting. Had 
he remained there he would have been 
instantly killed. Of course it is not as- 
serted that this is anything more than a 
coincidence; but the suggestion is made 
that coincidences of this sort have been 
so very frequent as to make one wonder 
as to whether there is not some deeper 
meaning in it all. 




XXXIV 

EVIDENCE FOR SUCH FACTS GREATER 
THAN REPORTED 

1 TRUST that these many detailed cases 
will not seem tedious to the reader, 
and that I have not given more than are 
needed. It has seemed to me best to put 
before the student of these things enough 
specimen cases so that he could have ma- 
terial out of which to construct an intelli- 
gent opinion. Hundreds of similar cases 
have been recorded in evidential shape. 
Thousands of similar things have hap- 
pened which have not been set down 
in any such way as to make them valu- 
able as proof. The great majority of 
people in whose experience these things 
126 



Can Telepathy Explai7i? 127 

occur do not appreciate the importance 
of making a record at the time. Conse- 
quently, though the facts may have been 
ever so valuable, they become only ru- 
mours and wonderful tales. There is one 
other thing which the reader ought to 
bear in mind. Perhaps the most striking 
and important things are not given to the 
public. Many of these happenings are so 
intimately personal that they cannot be 
shown to the world. The only point to 
be borne in mind here is that the reader 
may take it for granted that the evidence 
for these classes of facts is many times 
greater than appears from any published 
records. The things that are given to the 
public in any authentic way are mild un- 
der-statements instead of exaggerated ac- 
counts, and this for the reasons already 
referred to. I do not mean by this that 
certain newspapers do not publish the 
wildest Munchausen stories; but these 
are now left out of account, because 
they are not put in any shape so as to 



128 Can Telepathy Explain? 

constitute evidence of anything except 
the credulity of the publishers and 
the appetite of the readers for the mar- 
vellous. 




XXXV 

NATURAL OR SUPERNATURAL? 

IF the claim were generally made by 
those who have verified facts like 
these that they were supernaturally 
caused, then scientific men might have an 
excuse for declining to investigate them ; 
though even then it would seem to be 
worth while to study them far enough to 
be sure that there is no as yet undiscov- 
ered natural force at work. That my own 
attitude may be made clear, let me say 
that I do not believe in any supernatural. 
Whatever is seems to me a part of the 
natural order. If beings invisible to us at 
present exist, and if they are able to take 
some part in our ordinary human lives, the 

9 129 



130 Can Telepathy Explain f 

fact of their invisibility would not make 
them supernatural. If something is done 
in the presence of a blind man, the natural 
order is not transcended because he is not 
able to see the agent at work. It is per- 
fectly well known that our senses are 
very strictly limited. There are vibrations 
both too slow and too rapid to produce 
the sense of sound in ears constructed like 
our own. So there are vibrations both 
too slow and too fast to produce the sense 
of vision on such eyes as those with which 
we are endowed. It is, then, only a very 
small part of the actual natural universe 
which we either see or hear, and so far as 
science has anything to say about it, it is 
perfectly possible that the saying of Mil- 
ton may be true: 

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth 
Unseen, both when we wake and when we 
sleep. 

I do not assert that this is true. I merely 
say that it may be true for anything which 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 131 

our senses have to say in regard to the 
matter; and if there are such beings, it 
is at least theoretically possible that all 
these things of which I have been speak- 
ing may be accomplished through their 
agency. This theory will not be accept- 
ed by sane and reasonable men — men 
touched with the scientific spirit — until all 
other theories are demonstrated to be in- 
adequate to account for the facts. 




XXXVI 

PRESENT STATE OF THOUGHT IN RE- 
GARD TO THE IMMORTAL LIFE 

IT may be well for us here to consider 
the present state of the popular mind 
as touching the question of the immortal 
life. The further discussion will have 
more meaning for us after we have quietly 
considered where we stand in regard to 
this great question. In spite of apparent 
exceptions it is generally conceded by 
those who have made a careful study of 
the subject that the belief in some sort of 
continued existence after death is practi- 
cally universal. This does not mean that 
the lowest barbaric tribes have had any 
adequate conception of what we mean by 
132 



Can Telepathy Explain f 133 

immortality. Indeed, if we could be 
thoroughly certain that the individual 
overleaps the gulf of death that would 
not be proof positive that he is to go on 
for ever ; though I suppose that if we could 
be assured of a fact like that, the most of 
us would be willing to take our chances 
concerning any similar experience that 
might await us in the future. Practically, 
then, all people everywhere have believed 
that death, instead of being the end of 
personal consciousness, was only an inci- 
dent in the .advance of life. Indeed, bar- 
baric peoples have found it hard to be- 
lieve in death as in any way natural or 
intended. They are generally found to 
attribute it to magic or the machinations 
of some enemy, seen or unseen. If a 
man dies, the question is : "Who has killed 
him?" And they believe that the mind 
or the soul or the spirit or the shadow or 
the double or the second self or a some- 
what bearing the burden of the individu- 
ality has gone on and is still alive. 



1 34 Can Telepathy Explain f 

Skepticism on this subject is therefore a 
modern fact. It is one of the products of 
civilisation. It is the fruit of analysis and 
careful thought. It grows out of the at- 
tempt of man to understand and picture 
to himself how the wonderful thing can be. 
This skepticism is seen to be especially 
connected with the decay of religions, 
or theologies, which are the theoretical 
sides of religions. In ancient Greece and 
Rome, for example, the belief in the 
under-world was connected with the belief 
in the popular gods ; and when, as in the 
case of men like Csesar and Cicero, these 
mythological conceptions were outgrown, 
it was natural that they should begin to 
call in question other great faiths which 
had been bound up with them. So we 
find, at such periods in the history of the 
world, men frankly casting away all these 
beliefs, or else engaging in the work of 
trying to discover some reason for holding 
them other than that which had been sanc- 
tioned by the traditions of the past. The 



Can Telepathy Explain f 135 

young Christianity swept away the doubts 
and questions of the old classic world, and 
gave it the great ages of faith. Until the 
time of the Renaissance and the rise of 
the modern skeptical spirit connected with 
the enormous advance which science has 
made, there was practically no question 
about the other world. Indeed, during 
the Middle Ages people knew, or claimed 
to know, more about the other world than 
they did about this one. But the modern 
time is repeating again the experiences of 
the more enlightened periods of classic 
antiquity. It is the very essence of the 
modern spirit to inquire. We demand 
evidence; we want proofs for the beliefs 
we hold. Huxley perhaps has given voice 
to a very wide-spread feeling when he says 
that it is not only irrational to believe 
without evidence, but it is immoral. I 
am inclined to agree with this statement. 
There is no virtue in believing. There is 
no vice in doubt. Both belief and doubt 
should be subordinated to the question of 



136 Can Telepathy Explain? 

fact. We want the truth, for the truth 
only is real. The result of the rise of this 
spirit is that the old traditional faiths are 
seriously called in question. There are 
thousands of persons in the so-called or- 
thodox churches who believe, or think 
they believe, believe they believe, until 
some great crisis of their life, and then 
everything goes by the board. Lowell ex- 
presses this state of mind when he says : 

In the breaking gulfs of sorrow, when the 

helpless feet stretch out 
And find in the deeps of darkness no footing 

so solid as doubt. 

Scientists like Haeckel tell us with se- 
rene composure that such things as God, 
the soul, and the belief in immortality 
are old-world and worn-out superstitions 
which have no place in the rational beliefs 
of free men. On the other hand, men 
quite as eminent as he in science do not 
at all accept his calmly asserted logic. 
Mr. John Fiske, in his little posthumous 
book, Life Everlasting, tells us that 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 137 

there is nothing in modern science that 
touches or in any way threatens man's 
immortal hope. In a personal conversa- 
tion some years ago with Mr. Herbert 
Spencer, I asked him the direct question 
as to what bearing, in his view, evolution 
had on the problem of immortality, and 
his reply was, that it left it precisely 
where it was before. Other scientific 
men, like Le Conte, one of the noblest this 
country has produced, are simple and 
earnest believers in a future life. Profes- 
sor Shaler, of Harvard, in his remarkable 
work, The Individual, argues on the ba- 
sis of the best-known science that there 
is at least ground for trust in a continued 
existence after death. He uses a most 
striking illustration, which is worthy of 
notice. He shows how the individual 
man in the case of natural generation is 
carried on from the parents by means of 
the tiny particle of living substance, so 
that, as he says, "the spirit may safely be 
given into the keeping of other forms of 



138 Can Telepathy Explain? 

matter than the brain affords." He does 
not claim, of course, that this is a demon- 
stration of continued existence. He only 
makes the point that the present state of 
our scientific knowledge gives us no right 
to decide the matter in the negative. 




XXXVII 

THE POETS AND IMMORTALITY 

THE poets voice the feeling and heart 
of the world. Whittier expresses 
his pity for those who have no trust, in 
the beautiful words: 

Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress trees! 
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marbles play! 
Who hath not learned in hours of faith 
The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
That Life is ever lord of Death 
And Love can never lose its own. 

And Holmes has rung out his defiant 
challenge : 

139 



140 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

Is this the whole sad story of creation, 

Told by its breathing myriads o'er and o'er? 

One glimpse of day, then blank annihilation, 
A sunlit passage to a sunless shore? 

Give back our faith, ye mystery-solving 

lynxes! 
Robe us once more in heav'n-aspiring 

creeds! 
Better was dreaming Egypt with her sphinxes, 
The stony convent with its cross and beads. 

It may be easy enough for a man in 
some moods to persuade "himself that he 
does not care whether he is to live after 
the fact of death or not. There are cases 
of those, world-worn and weary, who im- 
agine that all they care for is sleep and 
rest. But what they fondly imagine as 
sleep and rest are only delusions ; for on 
that theory there is nobody there sleeping 
or resting. It seems to me that it is not 
life which these world-weary ones are glad 
to be rid of, but only the world-weariness, 
the conditions which have been attached to 
life. Rather it seems to me that Tennyson 
speaks the bottom truth when he says : 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 141 

Whatever crazy Sorrow saith, 

No life that breathes with human breath 

Hath ever truly longed for death. 

'T is life of which our nerves are scant, 
'T is life, not death, for which we pant, 
More life, and fuller, that we want. 




XXXVIII 

THE TRADITIONALLY SATISFIED 

THOSE people who are satisfied with 
their inherited belief in immortality- 
are perhaps to be congratulated. The 
only trouble is that it is the characteristic 
of this age to challenge not only this, but 
all other traditional opinions ; and when 
these challenged people find it difficult to 
give an account of themselves, this diffi- 
culty starts doubts which are not easily 
set at rest. Most Christians, I suppose, 
have accepted the belief as a part of their 
inherited religion. But the basis of the 
great doctrines of the churches is being 
tested and re-examined as never before in 
the history of the world. So there are 
142 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 143 

thousands of people to-day who feel no 
real assurance in regard to this matter; 
and perhaps the number is increasing. 
Such as they are intensely interested in 
anything that seems to have a bearing 
on the settlement of this great problem. 
While lesser minds and superficial thinkers 
are treating lightly the work in which the 
Society for Psychical Research is engaged, 
some of the greatest men of the time look 
a little more deeply into the questions 
concerned, and appreciate fully what is at 
stake. Mr. Gladstone accepted an hon- 
orary membership in this society, — hon- 
orary, because he was too busy to do any 
work, but was glad to have his name as- 
sociated with it. Now Mr. Gladstone, 
as all the world knows, was one of the 
foremost statesmen of his age. He held 
in his hand problems of war and peace, 
not only touching Europe, but all the 
world. He was a Churchman from head 
to foot, a professed believer in all the 
great orthodox doctrines of the Estab- 



144 Can Telepathy Explain f 

lished Church. He was a great brain, a 
pure heart, a keen controversialist. He 
was a statesman weighing the changes, the 
institutions, the growth of nations. He 
was keenly interested in all problems that 
concerned the progress of humanity. In 
accepting the honorary membership re- 
ferred to, he writes : " It [that is, the work 
of the Society] is the most important work 
which is being done in the world,— by far 
the most important." 

While not taking any active part in its 
investigations, for reasons which are sat- 
isfactory to himself, Professor Shaler, of 
Cambridge, already referred to in these 
pages, says in his book, The Individual, 
page 3.18: "The only direct evidence that 
can claim scientific inquiry which goes to 
show the persistence of the individual 
after the body dies, is that afforded by 
the so-called occult phenomena, by the 
alleged appearance of spirits or communi- 
cation with what appear to some inquirers 
to be the minds of the departed." 



XXXIX 

TWOFOLD REASON FOR INVESTIGATION 

SUCH, then, is the condition of the 
problem of continued existence at 
the present time. As has already been 
indicated, my interest in these alleged 
happenings which constitute the subject- 
matter for the investigations of the Soci- 
ety for Psychical Research is twofold. I 
have said that they promise an important 
addition to our knowledge of the powers 
of the human mind as embodied, whether 
they take us beyond the border-line of the 
great mystery or not. The other and 
greater reason for my interest is in the 
question as to whether they have any 
bearing on the condition of man after 

IO 

145 



146 Can Telepathy Explain? 

death. Were it not for the latter consid- 
eration, I presume I should leave the sub- 
ject to the interest and study of others. 
I have cared to devote what leisure time 
I have been able to find for a good many 
years to this study, in the hope that some 
clue might be discovered that would lead 
to the solution of the great question pro- 
pounded by the author of Job. 

Let us then turn to consider as to 
whether the facts which have been indi- 
cated can be explained by any ordinary 
theory. The law of parsimony must gov- 
ern us here, and we must keep within the 
limits of the known so far and so long as 
possible. However much we may like to 
believe that the continued existence of the 
soul may be demonstrated, we must be 
more anxious still to find and cling to the 
simple truth, whatever it may be. The 
number and kind of facts which have been 
discovered and verified beyond any 
reasonable doubt are such as to leave 
fraud and self-delusion and mere coinci- 



Can TelepatJiy Explain? 147 

dence out of the question. There are 
facts, and great numbers of them, which 
must be treated seriously. I believe that 
there are only two theories which are en- 
titled to serious consideration. 




XL 

NATURE OF FACTS TO BE EXPLAINED 

F3EF0RE considering with some care 
*—* these two theories, let us refresh our 
minds concerning the facts that need to 
be explained. We will do this by classi- 
fying them in some simple, general way. 

In the first place, there are the physical 
phenomena which must be considered and 
dealt with. These are so called because 
they involve the supposed contact with, 
or movement of, physical objects. But, 
as already intimated, it needs to be borne 
in mind that this division is somewhat ar- 
bitrary; for the so-called "physical " phe- 
nomena are connected with and seem to 
be directed by some invisible intelligence. 
148 



Can Telepathy Explain? 149 

Then there is the large variety of what 
may be roughly classified as mental phe- 
nomena. These are what claim to be 
communications by whatever method they 
may be delivered. They include the use 
of planchette, the Ouija board, automatic 
writing whether in trance or in the normal 
condition, trance speaking, etc. 




XLI 

THE FACTS CLASSIFIED 

IT may be worth while next roughly to 
classify the kinds of facts which are 
communicated. This will help us to see 
as to whether one theory or another seems 
more easily to fit the case. 

ist. There are hundreds of facts com- 
municated with which one or more of the 
sitters who are present are well acquainted 
beforehand. 

2d. There are things told which none of 
the sitters ever knew, but which it is pos- 
sible the psychic may have known. 

3d. There are no end of facts commu- 
nicated which the psychic by no possi- 
bility could ever have known, but which 
150 



Can Telepathy Explain f 151 

may have been known to some one of the 
sitters. 

4th. There are facts related which no 
person present, sitter or psychic, ever 
knew. 

5th. There are things told which are not 
known by any of the persons present, but 
which presumably may have been known 
by some living person somewhere in the 
world. 

6th. There are cases of facts communi- 
cated which no living person in the world 
knew at the time or could possibly have 
known. 

The object of setting down these state- 
ments in this manner is only to call at- 
tention to the point that the theory 
which is ultimately accepted must be 
one capable of including and explaining 
all this variety of facts. 



XLII 

THE TELEPATHIC THEORY 

NOW, as already said, there are only 
two theories which at the present 
time claim the serious attention of serious 
people. These are what have come to be 
widely known as the telepathic and the 
spiritistic theories. So zealously is the 
telepathic theory held to and advocated 
by the determined opponents of the spirit- 
istic, that the impression is made on the 
public mind that we know a good deal 
more about telepathy than we really do. 
Let us see just what it is that we know. 



152 



XLIII 

TELEPATHIC CASES SPORADIC AND 
UNCERTAIN 

THERE are sporadic cases of impres- 
sions or definite communications 
made between living minds at a distance. 
There are enough of these, and they are 
definite enough, to preclude the theory of 
coincidence, so that they are recognised 
by all serious students as real. They are, 
however, as I have said, generally spo- 
radic. The law in accordance with which 
they take place is not known, and they 
are not producible at will. Attempts 
have been made to communicate definitely 
from mind to mind, but with somewhat 
indifferent success. There have been hits 
enough to show that something real was 
taking place, but the hits have not been so 
i53 



154 Caji Telepathy Explain? 

numerous as the misses. This, then, is 
the real state of our knowledge in regard 
to telepathy. The theory is stretched 
and made almost all-inclusive, and the 
supposed agent at work is credited with 
almost unlimited powers and universal 
knowledge. This is done, not because 
there are any facts in existence to support 
such a claim, but merely because it seems 
to be the only alternative if the serious 
student wishes to escape the acceptance 
of the spiritistic theory. In telepathy it 
is generally assumed that it is the sub- 
conscious or subliminal self which is at 
work. This is because nobody is con- 
scious of obtaining the information that 
comes from somewhere, and nobody is 
conscious of receiving it. That is, the 
psychic on this assumption gathers this 
information without knowing it, and im- 
parts it without knowing it, which, to say 
the least, is a curious state of affairs. So, 
in order to escape another theory which is 
not acceptable to the particular student, 



Can Telepathy Explain f 155 

he divides the individual somewhat arbi- 
trarily into two parts, the conscious and 
the subconscious, and endows this sub- 
conscious self with the most tremendous 
powers. There is absolutely no proof 
whatever that the subconscious self pos- 
sesses or exercises any such powers, ex- 
cept that which lies in the necessity of 
assuming it in order to explain indispu- 
table facts. The division that is sometimes 
made between the objective and the sub- 
jective selves is largely an arbitrary one. 
That the mind does work below the level 
of consciousness, and that the results of 
processes which go on there do afterwards 
in the most inexplicable ways emerge into 
consciousness, of course, is conceded by 
all careful investigators. But that the sub- 
conscious self is a sort of separate entity, 
endowed with unlimited powers and able 
to carry on work in all sorts of directions 
on its own account, — to assume this is, I 
suDmitj, going beyond the limits of our 
knowledge 



XLIV 



TELEPATHIC ASSUMPTIONS 



THE only cases of telepathy of which 
we really know are telepathy be- 
tween two. That there is such a thing as 
"telepathie a trois," as Mr. Andrew Lang 
calls it, is something which by itself and 
on its own account has never been estab- 
lished as a fact. It is, as I have said in 
another connection, only an assumption 
in order to escape the acceptance of an- 
other theory. 

That the subconscious self can go at 
will and get facts, now in one State, now 
in another; that it can seek out at will 
the friends of the particular sitter who 
happens to be present ; that it can select 
156 



Can Telepathy Explain? 157 

facts which concern both living and dead, 
and which are apart from each other by 
years in time, as well as by thousands of 
miles in space; that it can combine 
separate qualities so as to successfully 
simulate a personality and that the par- 
ticular personality which the case re- 
quires; that it can at different sittings 
bring together just the facts to fit the 
person claimed to be present ; that at 
a subsequent sitting it can remember all 
these multitudinous details, begin where 
it left off weeks before, and go on in per- 
fect consistency with all the facts brought 
out before, — that all this is possible to the 
subliminal seems to pass the bounds of 
belief. That the subconscious self does 
actually do these things is simply a bold 
assumption. There is no proof of it as a 
fact. That something or someone, how- 
ever, does it all, every serious student in 
this department of investigation is per- 
fectly well aware. 



XLV 

ON TELEPATHIC THEORY, THE SITTER 

OUGHT TO GET WHAT HE EXPECTS 

AND HAS IN MIND. 

ON the telepathic theory it would seem 
that the sitter ought to get what 
he expects, i. e., such things as are in his 
own mind. If the mental states and the 
knowledge of the sitter are somehow re- 
flected in the subconscious self of the 
psychic, or if the psychic is able in any 
way to get at the mental conditions and 
the memory of the sitter, then the result 
ought to be a correct transcript of these 
things. But in my experience it has been 
very common for me to be completely 
surprised by getting things which I did 
158 



Can Telepathy Explain f 159 

not expect, and frequently statements 
which were the direct opposite of what I 
supposed to be true. 

It is noteworthy that this telepathic 
power is equally wise and equally effective 
whether the psychic is in a normal con- 
dition or in a trance. 




XLVI 

TELEPATHY OUGHT NOT TO MAKE SO 
MANY MISTAKES 

SO marvellous a being as this subliminal 
self, whose knowledge must ap- 
proach wonderfully near to the universal 
in order to account for the facts, surely 
ought not to be liable to make so many 
mistakes. Mistakes are made and are 
common, and they are frequently con- 
cerning things which are perfectly clear 
and definite in the minds of the sitters, 
and which on the telepathic theory ought 
to be very easily accessible and correctly 
reported by the subconscious self of the 
psychic. 

How does this theory apply to those 
1 60 



Can Telepathy Explain? 161 

cases in which animals seem to be con- 
scious of the presence of beings invisible 
to ordinary men and women? Whose 
subliminal self is it in this case that sees? 

Of course, it hardly needs to be pointed 
out that the theory of telepathy has no 
apparent application to what are called 
"physical" phenomena. There is not 
one particle of proof in existence to sup- 
port the assumption of anybody that the 
subliminal self can move a table or a chair 
or play on a musical instrument without 
any physical contact or the application of 
any force that is recognised by science. 

Is there anything in the telepathic 
theory which even seems to explain the 
statement claiming to come from my son 
as to papers in his drawer in his room 
in Boston which he wished to have de- 
stroyed? Here was something that was 
not known to anybody living on the face 
of the earth. It was in the consciousness 
of no one except that of him who had 
made the notes and had left them there. 



XLVII 

TELEPATHY AND APPARITIONS 

FT would seem to be impossible, in ac- 
1 cordance with the theory of telepathy, 
to account for the appearance of appari- 
tions. I call particular attention to the 
case of the young man who claimed to 
have been warned by the spirit of his 
father of his approaching death. Here 
was no medium, no question, no sugges- 
tion ; only the sudden appearance of an 
apparition, whose prophecy was fulfilled. 
Will someone tell me how telepathy can 
account for a fact like this? 



162 



XL VIII 

WHY SHOULD THE SUBLIMINAL SELF 
BE SUCH A LIAR? 

THEN there is one more point which 
has always seemed to me startling 
and strange in the light of the theory 
which would explain by means of tele- 
pathy or the subconscious self. How 
does it happen that this subconscious 
self is such an unconscionable, persistent, 
consistent, and abnormal liar about itself? 
Why does it not now and then by some 
sort of accident tell the truth? Has there 
ever been a case on record in which this 
subconscious self, which is so wise, so won- 
derful ; which is able to travel the earth 
over in pursuit of its facts and select the 
163 



164 Can Telepathy Explain T 

particular one which is needed ; which can 
build up no end of distinct and consistent 
personalities, and put into their lips words 
and expressions and statements of fact 
and memories which shall come very near 
to establishing their identity with people 
who used to live here, — is there, I say, a 
case on record where this subconscious 
self has owned up to being a subconscious 
self? In every single case with which I 
am acquainted, it has always made the 
claim that it was the spirit of somebody 
who used to live here on earth. The most 
unconscionable liars in this world generally 
lie for a reason. They have some motive 
or purpose in it all, even if it be not a 
very intelligible one. But why this sub- 
conscious self should never by any pos- 
sibility tell the truth seems difficult to 
understand. If it be said that it is a 
passive instrument and that it accepts the 
impressions and ideas of people who are 
about it, in accordance with the law of 
suggestion (that is supposed always to be 



Can Telepathy Explain? 165 

at work in hypnotism), even this does not 
seem to me satisfactorily to account for 
the facts. Hundreds of things which this 
subconscious self states as true (on this 
theory) are not at all in accordance with 
the law of suggestion. They are things 
which the medium knew absolutely no- 
thing about. They are things not only 
not suggested by the sitters, but state- 
ments concerning things of which the 
sitters were ignorant ; statements dia- 
metrically opposite to the opinions of the 
sitters ; statements of things not only not 
accepted by the sitters, but to which they 
were violently antagonistic. In matters 
of this sort, I submit that the supposed 
law of suggestion does not apply. 




XLIX 

WHAT TELEPATHY DOES NOT SEEM TO 
TOUCH 

IF now the reader will carefully look 
over the numbered list of cases which 
have been presented, he will be able to 
make up his own mind as to what ones 
of them would seem to be explicable on 
the theory of telepathy and what ones 
would not. There are at least half of 
them which, in my judgment, telepathy 
does not touch. If anyone chooses to 
assume that the subliminal consciousness 
of somebody can do any conceivable 
thing; travel over the world and find out 
any conceivable item of knowledge; tell 
of things that nobody in the world knows ; 
166 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 167 

resurrect facts from a long-distant past, 
and move physical objects without physi- 
cal contact, — if, I say, anyone chooses to 
assume a theory like this, why there is 
nobody who can prevent his doing it. 
But if he claims that it is scientific, or 
that there are any known facts or ade- 
quate reasons for such an assumption, 
then I submit that he will be likely to 
place under suspicion his reputation as a 
sane, fair-minded, and careful investigator. 




THE SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

LET us now turn for a little and con- 
sider the spiritistic theory. It is an 
axiom of science that one must keep to 
the nearest and most seemingly natural 
theory in attempting to explain facts 
which are not yet scientifically accounted 
for. We must not explain the unknown 
by something else which is still more un- 
known. But it seems to me that a rea- 
sonable claim may be set up in favour of 
the statement that the spiritistic theory 
is nearer to the natural and normal than 
such an expansion of the telepathic as 
would seem necessary to account for the 
facts with which we are dealing. 



LI 

PRACTICAL UNIVERSALITY OF 
SPIRITISTIC BELIEF 

IT is practically true that all men every- 
where have always believed in con- 
tinued existence after death. It is the 
teaching of all the religions of the world. 
It is bound up with the deepest loves 
and dearest hopes of the human heart. 
Now if this hope have a substantial basis, 
— that is, if all the people who have ever 
lived on this earth are living still, and if 
they are not far away somewhere in the 
deeps of space, — then what more natural 
than that they should attempt to come 
into communication with and influence 
the lives of those whom they used to 
169 



1 70 Can Telepathy Explain f 

know here? If they are living at all, 
there is no longer any reason for suppos- 
ing that they are away off, shut up in 
certain places called heavens or hells. 
This earth of ours is as near to heaven 
and near to God as any of the planets in 
space. There is no reason, then, why we 
should suppose that the former inhabit- 
ants of this earth may not be near to us, 
provided they are living at all. It is 
within the limits of the conceivable and 
rational also that they should be in some 
way embodied. Paul said: "There is a 
natural body and there is a pneumatical 
body." I do not offer this phrase as au- 
thority. I simply say that so far as any 
science can tell us to the contrary, it may 
be true. The intelligence which once 
animated the body of a friend here may 
still be the animating principle of an 
ethereal body unspeakably more real and 
powerful than that which used to clothe 
it, and still it be not cognisable by our 
senses. I do not say that these things 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 171 

are so. I simply assert that they may 
be. The only person in the universe 
which ever does things is either a human 
being or a being with quasi-human in- 
telligence. We have no knowledge of 
intelligently exercised force except such 
as is under the guidance of a human or 
quasi-human will. I submit, then, that 
on the supposition that people do live 
through the fact of, and after death, the 
theory of their agency in accomplishing 
the things which we are discussing is 
much more simple and natural than any 
other which has been brought forward. 




LII 



SPIRITISM CAN EXPLAIN ALL FACTS 



JN the next place, if we assume the 
existence of the people who used to 
inhabit this earth, their agency might 
easily explain and account for all the wide 
varieties and classes of experience which 
we have been considering. This theory 
would naturally account for all the mis- 
takes and failures which have been re- 
corded. We know that people in this 
world make mistakes and forget ; and 
there is no reason to suppose that the 
moment a man dies, he becomes either a 
perfect angel or a perfect devil. There 
is nothing in the fact of death with which 
we are acquainted to suddenly change 
172 



Can Telepathy Explain f 1 73 

one's nature or personal characteristics. 
What the difficulties of communication 
are on the spirit side — if there be any 
spirit side and any communications — we 
do not know. That difficulties should 
exist, it is not unreasonable to believe. 
It is no part of my present purpose to go 
into a discussion of what these may be. 
I only wish in a general way to assert that 
I have never had an experience or known 
of a well-authenticated account of one 
which might not be rationally explained 
on the supposition that there are invisible 
beings about us, who are interested in our 
affairs, and who, under certain conditions, 
can come into contact with our lives. 




LIII 

SPIRITISM AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES 

IF we believe that we are surrounded by 
a spiritual universe, that our friends 
may at times be near us, and occasionally 
may be able to render us assistance of one 
kind or another, this would rationally ex- 
plain the stories of which the world is full, 
of interventions on behalf of people in 
need or in danger. Such things as these 
by a certain class of believers are looked 
upon as special providences, — that is, 
God is supposed to interfere now and 
then in behalf of a certain person while 
others who are in danger are passed by. 
Sometimes a person's life is saved from 
a threatened danger in what seems to be 
i74 



Can Telepathy Explain f 175 

an unaccountable way, and at the same 
time the life is of no special value to the 
world. On the other hand, another per- 
son, who seems to be greatly needed, be- 
comes the victim of some tragedy. Of 
course the scientific temper of the modern 
world is inclined to pass these things over 
without taking account of them at all. 
There are, however, a great many who 
believe that God does specially interpose 
in behalf of them or their personal friends. 
I have known of a great many cases where 
this belief has been held. It seems to 
me that, granting that such happenings 
do occur, we can hardly believe that God 
is directly concerned in them. Waiving 
for the moment the difficulties that our 
modern theory of the universe presents to 
belief in Divine interference, it is hardly 
consistent with our highest trust in God. 
We cannot think that He is partial; that 
He would save one person and let another 
suffer peril. This seems to us unaccount- 
able when, so far as we can see, the one 



I 76 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

who is not delivered from danger may be 
the very one whose life would be specially 
valuable to his friends and the world. 
But if we have personal friends in the in- 
visible, and if we suppose that they may 
be present and sometimes able to render 
assistance, then this theory would ration- 
ally account for the facts. If a person was 
saved from some special danger, it might 
mean that a friend happened then to be 
present and able to render assistance. If 
not, then the friend might not be present, 
or might not be able to help. Things 
like this are constantly occurring in this 
world. Over and over again a man is 
saved from some imminent danger by the 
presence and assistance of a friend, but it 
does not depend upon the question as to 
whether his life is valuable or not. It 
simply depends upon the question as to 
whether his friend happened to be with 
him and able to render him the service 
required. Even though we have those 
who love us in the other world and though 



Can Telepatliy Explain? iJJ 

they might be ready to do for us anything 
possible, we cannot think that they are 
by our side always, or that they would 
always have the power to do what the oc- 
casion called for. This whole considera- 
tion may seem to some of my readers 
fanciful in the extreme. I refer to it, 
however, because I have happened to 
know a large number of experiences which 
have raised a question of this sort in the 
minds of those who have passed through 
them. These persons have not been 
fanciful or imaginative people. They 
would not naturally publish these things 
to those who might look upon them as 
a sign of weakness of mind. But that 
there are such cases, and a great many of 
them, I happen to know. 

It may be important to note briefly a 
few objections to the spiritistic theory, 
which, so far as my study of these mat- 
ters is concerned, have been frequently 
brought up. 



LIV 

OBJECTIONS TO SPIRITISTIC THEORY 

PROFESSOR SHALER, in The Indi- 
vidual, page 209, speaking of the 
reports of psychical happenings, admits 
that "there is a remnant that is quite 
reconcilable with the supposition that the 
dead live much as they lived on earth, and 
that they may communicate as regards 
matters of no particular importance with 
the living." He says that "this remnant 
cannot be as yet accounted for." 

Two or three things, it seems to me, 
may be said in regard to this admission. 
The quantity of facts investigated and veri- 
fied may be relatively small ; but is it not 
larger than might reasonably be expected, 
178 



Can Telepathy Explain f i 79 

when we remember how short the time 
is since any competent or serious at- 
tention has been paid to the matter? How 
few are the persons who have undertaken 
to determine the nature or the importance 
of these facts ! How many have made 
one or two trials, and then, not having 
found all they were looking for, have 
stopped ! I submit, for the consideration 
of all fair-minded people, that the results 
are quite as significant as could have been 
reasonably expected. Investigators should 
remember that if, granting that theory for 
a moment, they are dealing with inde- 
pendent personalities, these personalities 
cannot be dealt with, manipulated, ordered 
to go and come as a chemist deals with 
his elements in the laboratory. By the 
very supposition involved in these studies, 
a different method of investigation must 
be followed. This method may be just 
as scientific as any other, and yet it must 
recognise the facts and conditions and 
abide by them. 







■'y'~A. 






p I 


f^brfwim 






. — — -i 



LV 

ARE THE UNEXPLAINED FACTS 
IMPORTANT? 

THEN as to the nature of these facts. 
Professor Shaler refers to them as 
"of no particular importance with the 
living." It seems to me that calling them 
of no particular importance is assuming 
something which the facts do not justify. 
When Marconi gets his first message across 
the Atlantic, the contents of that message 
are of no importance whatever, except 
(and this is of the most tremendous im- 
portance conceivable) that he does get a 
message across the ocean. At the outset, 
and when he is trying to establish the fact 
that such a message can be transmitted, 



Can Telepathy Explain? 181 

who cares what the nature or the contents 
of it may be? When a waiting world re- 
ceived its first message by the first Atlantic 
cable, who cared what the message was? 
The one crucial fact was that a message 
of any kind was received. Mr. Huxley 
once slightingly referred to the messages 
supposed to be received through mediums, 
and said that even if they did come from 
another world, he had no more interest in 
them than he had in the gossip of old 
women in the next cathedral town. This 
always seemed to me a very strange say- 
ing for a man with the mental acuteness 
of Huxley. If the message should be of 
no more importance than old women's 
gossip, if it could be proved that a mes- 
sage had come, it would establish the fact 
that someone who had been called dead 
was still alive ; and that of itself is the 
most stupendous fact conceivable. The 
first point, then, to be considered, it seems 
to me, is as to whether there are any mes- 
sages, important or unimportant, that can 



1 82 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

be accounted for only on the supposition 
that they have come from some person who 
has lived through the experience of death. 
Who the message comes from, whether 
he is wise or foolish, whether he has 
stated some very important truth or made 
some perfectly commonplace remark, — 
these are matters that can wait until the 
other and greater question is settled. 
Until this is done, who has a right to de- 
termine as to the kind of statements he 
will accept, provided somebody on the 
other side has an opportunity to speak? 




LVI 

ARE THE FACTS TRIVIAL? 

AGAIN, in answer to this objection 
which is commonly made that the 
communications which are claimed to be 
received from the other life are trivial, 
they seem to me to be very much what 
we ought to expect, on the supposition 
that death does not radically or suddenly 
change people, whether as to character or 
intelligence. People have frequently 
asked me what sort of messages I have 
received ; and I have sometimes said that 
they were about on the level of my daily 
mail. I get wise letters and commonplace 
ones and foolish ones; but those which 
really come from noble and wise people 
183 



184 Can Telepathy Exp lam? 

are not always over-dignified nor do they 
deal with the great problems of the uni- 
verse. They are frequently taken up with 
the simplest, commonest, most personal 
matters ; but they are perfectly natural 
and fitting in the circumstances which 
called them forth. If people after death are 
just "folks," substantially the same kind 
of people they were here, introduced into 
new conditions, and with infinite possi- 
bilities of growth and progress ahead of 
them, there is no reason why we should 
not get from them at first simple personal 
messages, if we can get any at all. And 
it is to be remembered that if their object 
should happen to be to convince the 
friends left behind that they are still alive 
and that they maintain their personal 
identity, this might be more readily done 
by reference to old and common and 
simple things than in any other way. 



LVII 



AS TO DESCRIPTIONS OF ANOTHER LIFE 



IT is said that we get no satisfactory de- 
scriptions of another world or another 
life. Here two points may well be made. 
In the first place, if they should enter 
into elaborate and magniloquent descrip- 
tions of another world, we should feel at 
once that the statements were open to 
suspicion. At any rate, there would be 
no way of our testing the matter and 
finding as to whether what they had told 
us was true or not ; and the one thing of 
importance, at the outset, at any rate, is, 
if such a thing is possible, to establish the 
fact of continued existence and of per- 
sonal identity. 

185 



1 86 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

It may well be true (and this is what 
the intelligences communicating have told 
me over and over again) that it is impos- 
sible for them to give us comprehensible 
descriptions of their present state of being. 
A very little thought will show us that all 
our knowledge is limited by human ex- 
perience. If, then, the conditions of 
that life transcend human experience, — 
and most certainly we should expect 
them to do so, — then by so much as 
they transcend what we have so far ex- 
perienced here, by so much they must 
remain unknown to us until we get there. 
It may be possible and practicable to 
establish the fact of continued existence, 
and yet it may remain impossible for us to 
get a clear and definite idea as to the na- 
ture of that other life. This seems to me 
precisely what in the nature of things we 
should expect. 



LVIII 

THE TEACHING OF SPIRITISM 

IF by important communications from 
the other life it is meant that no high 
and fine ethical and spiritual teaching is 
received, then the statement simply is not 
true. If anyone will take the trouble to 
make himself acquainted with the best 
literature in this direction, he will find 
that there is no nobler religion, no grander 
morals, no sweeter humanities, no more 
hopeful outlook for the world to be found 
anywhere on earth than is to be found 
here. 



187 



LIX 

HAVE THE "SPIRITS" DONE ANY GOOD? 

IT is sometimes said that the spirits have 
done no good. The question is asked 
as to why they do not help somebody ; 
why they do not solve perplexing mys- 
teries, unravel judicial tangles, give evi- 
dence in courts of justice, or engage in 
works of philanthropy. The answer is, 
that so far as these law points are con- 
cerned, though I have seen them sug- 
gested more than once in the newspapers, 
they are absurd on the face of them. Is 
there any judge in Christendom who 
would accept testimony from this source 
as a part of any judicial trial? There are 
on record no end of cases where mysteries 
188 



Can Telepathy Explain 9 1 89 

have been solved and family tangles un- 
ravelled. There are a good many other 
cases where attempts have been made in 
this direction, but where the persons con- 
cerned have refused to have anything to 
do with them. There are on record a 
large number of cases (and with many of 
them I am familiar) where great services 
have been rendered, sometimes even to 
the saving of life. As to good being 
done, among the cases which I have 
offered in this volume are those of prac- 
tical philanthropy, wide-spread and long- 
continued. 




LX 

SO MANY SITTINGS ARE FAILURES 

ANOTHER objection frequently of- 
fered as against the spiritistic theory- 
is that so many sittings are failures. Here 
let it be remembered that a great many 
who claim to be mediums are outright and 
intentional frauds. There are others 
among them who are undoubtedly honest, 
but self-deluded. Certain strange things 
happen, and they straightway fly off to 
another world to find an explanation for 
them when it might easily be discovered 
nearer home. The failures that occur in 
the presence of those who possess genuine 
psychic power seem to me to be very 
easily explained. If these communica- 
190 



Can Telepathy Explain? 191 

tions do come from real people in an in- 
visible world, then of course the psychic 
has no more control over them than does 
a telegraphic operator over a message that 
may be received for transmission at the 
office. If there is no one who wishes to 
communicate, or if the one who is desired 
is not present, then of course the sitting, 
from the point of view of this world, 
would be a failure ; but the psychic would 
not be to blame. Indeed, on this theory 
the frequent failures of the psychics are a 
point in their favour. If they were expert 
tricksters merely, there would ordinarily 
be no need of failure; and on the theory 
of telepathy, it would seem that they 
ought not so frequently to occur. In 
other words, it seems to me that this fact 
is a point against the telepathic theory 
and in favour of the other. 



i-^^^SS^^^ 


§§fe S&5?*£s3lc(il 


&i- 


■"^^^^^w 




™ 



LXI 

SPIRITISM NOT DEPENDENT ON THEISM 

THOUGH it may seem a rather start- 
ling statement to make, it is yet 
true that the question of continued exist- 
ence can be considered apart from any 
theistic belief whatsoever. If a man be- 
lieves in God then he may say with a good 
deal of logical force that this carries with 
it a belief in continued personal existence. 
But though a man regard himself as an 
atheist, still he ought not to put these 
strange facts one side. The question of 
living through and beyond the fact of 
death may be considered without any re- 
gard to the question of theism or atheism. 
Whatever a man may believe concerning 
192 



Can Telepathy Explain f 193 

God, it is still true that we are here and 
are what we are. Some power has pro- 
duced us, and a power which is adequate 
to this may, for all we know, be adequate 
to continuing our personal existence be- 
yond the experience of death. In a uni- 
verse like this, no man has a right to set 
limits to the possible. It resolves itself 

into a question of fact and evidence. 
13 




LXII 

HUDSON'S THE LA W OF PSYCHIC 

PHENOMENA 



THERE is one modification of the 
telepathic or subconscious-self the- 
ory which has played so important a part 
in this discussion that it is deserving 
of special mention. Mr. Thomas Jay 
Hudson, LL.D., has published a book 
which has gone through a good many 
editions, under the title of The Law of 
Psychic Phenomena. It makes the claim 
of being strictly scientific in its method, 
and so has produced a great impression 
on large numbers of its readers. Let us 
then examine this book a little. The 
author divides the human personality into 
194 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 195 

two parts, the objective and the subjec- 
tive selves. The objective self is that 
which reasons, and has in its power the 
entire control of the individual's practical 
conduct during life; but this part of the 
mind is mortal, and ceases to exist with 
the body. The subconscious self is the 
immortal part, — in other words, the real 
and permanent person. During life, 
however, it is entirely under the control 
of the objective self. It is the objective 
self which determines conduct and char- 
acter. The subjective self, then, is con- 
trolled, dominated, moulded, shaped 
during life by the objective self; but at 
death, this objective self slips out and 
leaves the subjective self to bear the con- 
sequences indefinitely in the other life. 
In other words, it would seem to be a 
logical necessity of the situation that the 
objective self might damn its helpless part- 
ner to all eternity and it have nothing to 
say about it. It is a sort of Siamese twin 
arrangement, in which one of the twins 



196 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

has the power to do whatever he pleases, 
and then at the last escapes and leaves the 
other one to bear all the consequences. 
This idea would be simply ludicrous, were 
it not so hideously unjust and immoral as 
to appear a little ghastly. The old theory 
of Adam's having the power to send to 
eternal perdition millions of his descend- 
ants who had nothing to say about it would 
seem to be the most fitting parallel. How 
the author of this later theory could ob- 
ject to the former does not easily appear. 
Another important feature of this book 
lies in the fact that its author accepts 
without question almost all so-claimed 
spiritualistic phenomena, physical as well 
as mental ; and he calmly assumes that 
this subjective self is the agent in the per- 
formance of all of them. He goes so far 
as to believe that the subjective self, in 
some utterly unknown and unaccountable 
way, has the power to lift tables and move 
physical objects without any visible con- 
tact. 



Can Telepathy Explain ? 197 

I should not have noticed this so-called 
explanation, but for the fact that I sup- 
pose I have received hundreds of letters 
since the book was published, asking me 
what I thought of it as an explanation of 
these phenomena. Its scientific value 
may easily be seen when it is noticed that 
the whole superstructure is based upon 
two pure assumptions. These assump- 
tions are, first, that there is a real and 
radical division between the objective and 
subjective minds. Any man who has 
made a careful study of the problems in- 
volved knows that no proof whatever 
exists that there is any such division. 
Whatever activities may be manifested in 
cases of hypnotism, in the development 
of what appear to be secondary or even 
tertiary selves, do not justify the position 
assumed by the author of this book. 

The second assumption is that the sub- 
jective self has the power to produce all 
so-called spiritualistic phenomena, and, 
without contact, to move physical objects. 



1 98 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

I submit that the author has not taken 
the first step in proving that the subjec- 
tive self has the power to move even a 
pin's weight of anything. 

Until, therefore, these two assumptions 
are established as true by the offering of 
at least one verifiable case under each of 
them, the claim that is made for the book 
that it is a scientific setting forth of psy- 
chical phenomena may be left one side. 
When one little fact is offered as substan- 
tial proof of either of these assumptions, 
then it will be time seriously to consider it. 





LXIII 

ALL NORMAL PEOPLE DESIRE CONTINUED 
EXISTENCE 

IN conclusion, then, let us take note of a 
few facts. All normally constituted 
people wish to continue to live beyond 
the incident of death. It was this great 
faith which more than anything else or all 
other things combined gave the young 
Christianity its power of conquest over 
the Roman world. But the happenings 
which made the early Christians feel sure 
took place a good many years ago. The 
witnesses for them are now not accessible. 
We have not the first-hand testimony of a 
single eye-witness to any of them. The 
modern spirit of inquiry has raised the 
199 



200 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

spirit of doubt in thousands of minds. 
The world would like, and the world 
needs, a reinforcement of its trust in this 
direction, if it may be legitimately ob- 
tained. The great representatives of the 
Christian faith are constantly lamenting 
that our modern civilisation is in danger 
of being submerged beneath the floods of 
dark materialism. In our great cities the 
possession of wealth appears to be the 
chief object sought by the majority of 
human beings. The churches lament that 
the methods by which a man becomes 
wealthy are easily forgotten, and that the 
simple fact of wealth assures a man high 
position in society, and a preponderating 
influence even in the church itself. On 
the other hand, the great mass of the 
world's labourers are restless, and the 
foundations of our social and industrial 
order seem to be threatened by the up- 
heaval of this wide-spread discontent. 
The socialists in Europe are openly say- 
ing: "It used to be the church and the 



Can Telepathy Explain? 201 

nobility; now it is the church and the 
bourgeois. They have been telling us 
from time immemorial that we ought to 
be contented in the position in which 
Providence has placed us, and look for 
our reward in another world. We no 
longer believe in any other world, and we 
propose to have our share of the good 
things in this. If we cannot get them by 
peaceful means, we propose to get them 
anyhow." And, after all, can any serious 
thinker very much blame them? If this 
world really is only a cosmic dog-kennel, 
whose roof is the overarching blue, and 
if, when we get through here, that is the 
end of us, why should one fortunate ani- 
mal sit beside a huge pile of very attractive 
bones a thousand times more than he him- 
self can devour, and, like the dog in the 
manger, spend his life in keeping them 
from being devoured by anybody else? 
If the time ever comes when the belief in 
another life has entirely faded out, then 
our present slowly progressive order of 



202 Can Telepathy Explain f 

affairs will experience such earthquakes 
as the past has never known. I believe 
that a real working conviction that man is 
a soul and has a body, and that Browning's 
saying is true that the only matter of im- 
portance is "the development of a soul," 
is more important for the welfare of the 
world than all our development of wealth, 
all our inventions, all our discoveries, all 
our enormous advance of knowledge in 
any other direction. Buckle, the author 
of The History of Civilisation, says, "If 
immortality be not true, it matters little 
whether anything else be true or not." 
This conviction would put meaning into 
the life of the rich man and make him feel 
that the real thing to live for is the de- 
velopment of the character of men and 
helping them to find and live out their 
true selves. On the other hand it would 
be an unspeakable boon to the poor. It 
would not make them contented to go 
without the means of decent living, of 
culture, and of self-development ; but it 



Can Telepathy Explain f . 203 

would help them to know that the real 
man is something more than the means 
of living. It would make them know that 
the best things of the world are no mo- 
nopoly of the rich or favoured class. It 
would make them know that he who is 
true to himself and to his high ideals is 
living the only successful life. It would 
make them know that this world is only a 
primary school. It would help them to 
remember that the important thing is not 
a cushioned seat in the schoolhouse, nor 
velvet-covered text-books, nor rich stuffs 
for clothing. They would understand 
that the only important thing is to get 
one's lessons well and be ready to gradu- 
ate. It seems to me, then, that I say well 
that a new, a great, a working conviction 
in this direction, as revealing to man his 
essential self, is the most important object 
of knowledge for the modern world. 




LXIV 

NO FRESH EVIDENCE LIKELY EXCEPT 

ALONG THE LINES OF PSYCHICAL 

RESEARCH 

THERE is no fresh evidence likely to 
be discovered along any other lines 
than those of psychical research. As said 
at the outset of this volume, these state- 
ments of fact which are being investigated 
now are of precisely the same kind and 
general character as those on which the 
great religions of the world have been 
based in the past. The advantage is with 
the modern statements, because the hap- 
penings can now be investigated, and the 
witnesses to them can be cross-questioned. 
But while the world would like a reinforce- 
204 



Can Telepathy Explain f 205 

ment of its faith in the hereafter, all sane 
and honest men desire above all things 
else that the simple truth should be known. 
All honest inquiry will exert itself to the 
utmost to avoid any bias likely to lead it 
astray. As the result of the careful in- 
vestigations of serious-minded inquirers, 
a large body of fact has at last been satis- 
factorily established. In spite of fraud 
and self-delusion and purposed deception, 
enough is now known beyond any rational 
question to establish the fact that there 
are serious problems which must somehow 
be solved. These things have not been 
done in a corner, and they can no longer 
be simply sneered at and set aside. State- 
ments of facts which are acknowledged by 
all competent students of these matters 
have been presented in this volume. 
Enough of them have been set forth to 
give the intelligent reader grounds for 
judgment as to their importance. Only 
two theories have been seriously advanced 
to account for them. One is telepathy, 



206 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

or mind-reading, and the other is that they 
are the work of invisible intelligences. I 
confess that J strongly incline to accept 
the latter theory. It seems to me more 
simple, more natural, nearer to what we 
really know, and better fitted to explain 
all the facts. I am compelled, therefore, 
to accept it as a provisional hypothesis. 
If somebody can explain my facts in some 
other way, I should be bound to consider 
what he might have to offer; for no man 
can afford to close his mind to new truth. 
He must be ever ready to reconstruct his 
theories and make them accord with any 
newly discovered facts. 

Here, then, I rest for the present. The 
reader must, if he be seriously minded, 
not put these things one side, but consider 
them carefully. Then, as to what they 
mean, "let every man be fully persuaded 
in his own mind." 




APPENDIX I 

SOME OPINIONS OF WELL-KNOWN MEN 

MAN is an infinite little copy of God; 
that is glory enough for man. I am 
a man, an invisible atom, a drop in the ocean, 
a grain of sand on the shore. Little as I am, 
I feel the God in me, because I can also bring 
forth out of my chaos. I make books, which 
are creations. I feel in myself that future 
life; I am like a forest which has been more 
than once cut down; the new shoots are 
stronger and livelier than ever. 

" I am rising, I know, toward the sky. 
The sunshine is on my head. The earth 
gives me its generous sap, but heaven lights 
me with the reflection of unknown worlds. 
You say the soul is nothing but the result of 
bodily powers. Why, then, is my soul more 
207 



208 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

luminous when my bodily powers begin to 
fail? Winter is on my head and eternal 
spring in my heart. Then I breathe at this 
hour the fragrance of the lilacs, the violets 
and the roses as at twenty years ago. The 
nearer I approach the end the plainer I hear 
around me the symphonies of the worlds 
which invite me. 

"It is marvellous, yet simple. It is a fairy 
tale, and it is historic. For half a century I 
have been writing my thoughts in prose and 
verse; history, philosophy, drama, romance, 
tradition, satire, ode, and song. I have tried 
all, but I feel I have not said a thousandth 
part of what is in me. When I go down to 
the grave, I can say, like many others, I have 
finished my day's work, but I cannot say I 
have finished my life. My days will begin 
again the next morning. The tomb is not a 
blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. It closes 
on the twilight to open on the dawn." — 
Victor Hugo. 

" For logical, well trained, truth-loving 
minds, the only security against Spiritism is in 



Appendix I 209 

hiding or running away. ... If Sir Isaac 
Newton were alive to-day, he would not un- 
likely be a convert to Spiritism; the amount 
of human testimony in favour of Spiritualistic 
claims is a millionfold greater than that in 
favour of the theory of gravity. 

" The late Judge Edmonds used to say that 
he sifted the evidence of spirit manifestations 
just as he sifted the evidence in cases of law, 
and in accordance with the same principles, 
and from the standard of the law books and 
the universities his position was impregna- 
ble." — Dr. Beard, of New York. 

"These experiences have convinced her 
[Mrs. Underwood] as nothing in the orthodox 
faith held by her ancestors, in which she was 
educated, had or could, of the truth and 
reasonableness of the soul's survival of death, 
and of its progressive existence in immortal 
spheres beyond this life." — B. F. Under- 
wood. 

"At a very early stage of the inquiry it was 
seen that the power producing the phenomena 



2 i o Can Telepathy Explain ? 

was not merely a blind force, but was asso- 
ciated with and governed by intellige7ice, some- 
times below that of the medium, frequently 
in direct opposition to the wishes of the medium, 
and sometimes of such a character as to lead 
to the belief that it does not emanate from 
any person present, ' ' the logical inference 
being that it emanated from a spirit; for on 
page 95 he says, ' ' I have observed some cir- 
cumstances which seem exclusively to point to 
the agency of an outside intelligence not be- 
longing to any human being in the room. ' ' — 
Sir Wm. (Prof.) Crookes, F.R.S. 

" I do not hesitate to affirm that a careful 
and dispassionate review of my own experi- 
ments, extending over a period of twenty 
years, together with the investigation of evi- 
dence supplied to me from trustworthy 
sources, compels my belief in Spiritualism as 
a science based solely on facts open to the 
world, through an extensive system of medium- 
ship, its cardinal truth, established by experi- 
ment, being that of a world of spirits, and the 
continuity of the existence of the individual 



Appendix I 211 

spirit, through the momentary eclipse of 
death." — Prof. W. F. Barrett, F.R.S. 

" My position, therefore, is that the phe- 
nomena of Spiritualism in their entirety do 
not require confirmation. They are proved, 
quite as well as any facts are proved in other 
sciences, and it is not denial or quibbling that 
can disprove any of them." — Alfred Rus- 
sel Wallace, F.R.S. 

" Having tried the hypothesis of telepathy 
from the living for several years, and the 
' spirit ' hypothesis also for several years, I 
have no hesitation in affirming with the most 
absolute assurance that the spirit-hypothesis 
is justified by its fruits, and the other hypo- 
thesis is not." Again, "At the present time, 
I cannot profess to have any doubt that the 
chief ' communicators ' to whom I have re- 
ferred in the foregoing pages are veritably 
the personalities that they claim to be, that 
they have survived the change we call death, 
and that they have directly communicated 
with us whom we call living, through Mrs. 



2 1 2 Can Telepathy Explain f 

Piper's entranced organism." — Dr. Richard 
Hodgson. 



"We have already adequate evidence that 
telepathy does not operate between living and 
embodied minds alone, but operates also be- 
tween the so-called dead and the living, 
between discarnate and incarnate souls." — 
F. W. H. Myers. 

' ' Between deaths and the apparitions of dy- 
ing persons, a connection exists which is not 
due to chance alone." — Prof. Henry Sidg- 
wick. 

Prof. Gerling, in his recent address to 
the Magnetic Society of Berlin : "I have been 
asked to dissemble and not let my views be 
known, but in consequence of this attack I 
now declare / am a Spiritualist, and shall 
always remain one." 

Rev. Dr. Parker, City Temple, London: 
" It is true, and I have repeatedly said it, that 
I hold communion with the spirit of my wife." 



Appendix I 213 

Rev. Dr. T. E. Green: "We are stand- 
ing on the verge of what I believe is a wonder- 
ful xevival of Spiritualism in thought and in 
life." 

Rev. Canon Wilberforce: "Appealing 
as it does to the yearnings of the soul, espe- 
cially in time of bereavement, for sensible 
evidence of the continuity of life after phy- 
sical death, belief in modern Spiritualism 
continues rapidly to increase in all ranks of 
society. ... Its strength lies in the 
thousands of private homes in which one or 
more of the family has mediumistic powers." 
— Page 16, Spiritualism at the Church Congress. 

Rev. H. R. Haweis: " Use your Bible and 
use your brains when the facts of Spiritual- 
ism come before you, for they all fit in, in a 
very extraordinary manner with the general 
mechanism and theory of the Christian re- 
ligion. With this caution and with a God- 
fearing spirit of desire to reap that which is 
good only, they cannot fail to bring you com- 
fort and blessing. All the Bible was full of 



214 Can Telepathy Explain? 

spiritual manifestations, mighty rushing winds, 
tongues of fire, trances, automatic writings, 
visions and appearances of the dead, mo- 
ments of high inspiration, powers of healing, 
divine impulses which made people act with 
a strength and ability beyond their ordinary 
capacities." 

Rev. J. Page Hopps: " I have assisted at a 
hundred experiments, and have observed and 
reflected for nearly thirty years, and can only 
say that I believe there is no escape from the 
tremendous conclusion that just beyond the 
thin hiding veil of what we call ' the senses ' 
there is a new or undiscovered world, where 
all the subtle forces are, and where the 
myriads upon myriads of God's children who 
have vanished — live and love, and think and 
work. What most puzzles me is, not that 
they sometimes signal through the veil, but 
that they do not signal all along." — Death a 
Delusion. 

Dr. Thornton, at the Church Congress 
in Newcastle, said: " Spiritualism inculcates 
the virtues of purity, charity, and justice; 



Appendix I 215 

setting forth as well the loving fatherhood of 
God, as the brotherhood of man, to be con- 
tinued, with personal recognition, in the future 
life." 

The Rev. Thomas Greenbury, in Leeds, 
at first opposed Spiritualism, but after careful 
investigation, said: "I could as soon doubt 
the existence of the sun as doubt the fact of 
my holding communion with my darling 
daughter. I thank God daily for the privi- 
lege." 

Alderman T. P. Barkas, F.G.S., thus 
testifies: " The despised phenomena of mod- 
ern Spiritualism have done more to uproot 
materialism and fill thoughtful and educated 
sceptics with ardent hopes for a future life, 
than have all the teachings of all the pulpits 
in Christendom during the same period." 

M. Leon Favre, Consul General of France, 
and brother of Jules Favre, the eminent French 
Senator, says: " I have long, carefully, and 
conscientiously studied Spiritual phenomena. 
Not only am I convinced of their irrefragable 



2 1 6 Cait Telepathy Explain ? 

reality, but I have also a profound assurance 
that they are produced by the spirits of those 
who have left the earth; and further that they 
only could produce them. I believe in the 
existence of an invisible world corresponding 
to the world around us. I believe that the 
denizens of that world were formerly resident 
on this earth, and I believe in the possibility 
of inter-communion between the two worlds." 

Prof. De Morgan, at one time London's 
greatest mathematician, says: " I have both 
seen and heard, in a manner which would 
make unbelief impossible, things called spirit- 
ual which cannot be taken by a rational being 
to be capable of explanation by imposture, 
coincidence, or mistake. The physical ex- 
planations which I have seen are miserably 
insufficient." 

Prof. Challis, the late Plumerian Pro- 
fessor of Astronomy at Cambridge, stated his 
opinion in a letter to the Clerical "Journal of 
June, 1862, as follows: " I have been unable 
to resist the large amount of testimony to 
such facts, which has come from many inde- 



Appendix I 217 

pendent sources, and from a vast number of 
witnesses. ... In short, the testimony 
has been so abundant and consentaneous, that 
either the facts must be admitted to be such 
as are reported, or the possibility of certifying 
facts by human testimony must be given up." 

Dr. Robert Chambers, of Edinburgh, 
said : ' ' The names we are able to quote of 
men who have publicly acknowledged their 
conviction of the reality of the phenomena of 
modern Spiritualism form only a small portion 
of those who are really convinced, every 
Spiritualist knows." In a letter of Dr. 
Chambers's, addressed to Alfred R. Wallace, 
February, 1867, he says: "I have for many 
years known that these phenomena are real, 
as distinguished from impostures; and it is 
not of yesterday that I concluded they were 
calculated to explain much that has been 
doubtful in the past; and when fully ac- 
cepted they will revolutionise the whole 
frame of human opinion on many important 
matters." 

M. Thiers, ex-President of the French Re- 



2 1 8 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

public, exclaimed: " I am a Spiritualist, and 
an impassioned one, and I am anxious to 
confound Materialism in the name of science 
and good sense." 

Camille Flammarion, well-known in 
scientific circles as an astronomer and mem- 
ber of the Academie Francaise, thus testifies 
to the truth of Spiritualism: " I do not hesi- 
tate to affirm my conviction, based on per- 
sonal examination of the subject, that any 
scientific man who declares the phenomena 
denominated 'magnetic,' 'somnambulic,' 
' mediumic,' and others not yet explained by 
science, to be impossible is one who speaks 
without knowing what he is talking about; 
and also any man accustomed, by his pro- 
fessional avocations, to scientific observation 
— provided that his mind be not biassed by 
preconceived opinions — may acquire a radi- 
cal and absolute certainty of the reality of the 
facts alluded to." 

Serjeant Cox, an Assistant Judge of the 
Middlesex Sessions, President of the Psycho- 
logical Society of Great Britain, getting satif ■ 



Appendix I 219 

factory proofs of independent writing through 
a distinguished medium, wrote of it thus 
August 8, 1876: " I can only say that I was 
in the full possession of my senses ; that I was 
wide awake; that I was in broad daylight; 
that the medium was under my observation 
the whole time, and could not have moved 
hand or foot without being detected by me. 
That these spiritual phenomena oc- 
cur it is vain to dispute." 

C. F. Varley, the distinguished English 
electrician, chief engineer to the Electric and 
International Telegraph Company, assistant 
in the construction of the Atlantic telegraph, 
in connection with Sir Michael Faraday and 
Sir William Thomson the first to demon- 
strate the principles governing the transmis- 
sion of electricity through long deep-sea 
cables, writing in 1880, said: "Twenty-five 
years ago I was a hard-headed unbeliever. 
. . . Spirit phenomena, however, suddenly 
and quite unexpectedly were soon after devel- 
oped in my own family. . . . This led me 
to inquire and to try numerous experiments 



220 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

in such a way as to preclude, as much as cir- 
cumstances would permit, the possibility of 
trickery and self-deception. 

" That the phenomena occur there is over- 
whelming evidence, and it is too late now to 
deny their existence. Having experimented 
with and compared the forces with electricity 
and magnetism, and after having applied 
mechanical and mental tests, I entertain no 
doubt whatever that the manifestations which 
I have myself examined were not due to the 
operation of any of the recognised physical 
laws of nature, and that there has been present 
on the occasions above-mentioned some in- 
telligence other than that of the medium and 
observers." 

Raoul Pictet, Professor in the Genoa 
University, delivered a lecture May, 1893, in 
the hall of the University of Liege in Belgium, 
giving in his adhesion to Spiritualism, saying: 
' ' I am constrained to do so by the invincible 
logic of facts." 

Dr. Miguel Sans Benito, Professor of 
Metaphysics in the University of Barcelona, 



Appendix I 221 

is a devoted Spiritualist. He affirms and 
publishes that: " Spiritualism is the synthesis 
of the most important principles and dis- 
coveries of science; and that we may advan- 
tageously study it, with the firm assurance 
that it will open out new horizons to our in- 
telligence; besides supplying our hearts with 
a beautiful consolation in those bitter mo- 
ments of our lives which are occasioned by a 
painful bereavement." 

M. T. Falconer, Professor in the Techni- 
cal Institute of the Minister of Public Instruc- 
tion at Alessandria, in Piedmont, is an 
enthusiastic Spiritualist, declaring that the 
spiritual phenomena afford ' ' the only positive 
proofs of a future conscious existence." 

The learned Ochorowicz, Professor in the 
University of Warsaw, was induced in the 
latter part of 1894 to study the psychic phe- 
nomena under the most rigorous test condi- 
tions of mediums. Having previously studied, 
he was considered an authority in magnetism 
and hypnotism — and now he was bound to 
get at the bottom of what was denominated 



222 Can Telepathy Explain? 

' ' Spiritualism. ' ' After being fully convinced 
of its truth he said: " I found I had done a 
great wrong to men who had proclaimed new 
truths at the cost of their positions. And 
now, when I remember that I branded as a 
fool that fearless investigator Crookes, the 
inventor of the radiometer, because he had 
the courage to assert the reality of medium- 
istic phenomena, and to subject them to sci- 
entific tests; and when I also recollect that I 
used to read his articles upon Spiritualism 
with the same stupid style as his colleagues in 
the British Association bestowed upon them, 
regarding him as crazy, I am ashamed both 
of myself and others, and I cry from the very 
bottom of my heart, ' Father, I have sinned 
against the light! ' " 

' ' If any one cares to hear what sort of con- 
viction has been borne in upon my own mind, 
as a scientific man, by some twenty years' 
familiarity with those questions which concern 
us, I am very willing to reply as frankly as I 
can. 

" First, then, I am, for all personal pur- 



Appendix I 223 

poses, convinced of the persistence of human 
existence beyond bodily death; and though I 
am unable to justify that belief in a full and 
complete manner, yet it is a belief which has 
been produced by scientific evidence; that is, 
it is based upon facts and experience." — 
Dr. Oliver Lodge, F.R.S., Proceedings, S. 
P. R., March, 1902. 

"Asa Christian and a spiritual being I be- 
lieve that communications with the spiritual 
world are reasonable and to be expected; in- 
deed, that our whole religion reveals it and 
requires it, and that, as a matter of fact, we 
practise intercourse with the spiritual world 
every day of our lives." — Rt. Rev. William 
H. Moreland, Bishop of Sacramento, Cal., 
U. S. A. 

Prof. Hare, Emeritus Professor of Chem- 
istry in the University of Pennsylvania: " Far 
from abating my confidence in the inferences 
respecting the agencies of the spirits of de- 
ceased mortals, in the manifestations of which 
I have given an account in my work, I have, 
within the last nine months ' ' (this was written 



224 C an Telepathy Explain ? 

in 1858) "had more striking evidences of 
that agency than those given in the work in 
question." 

Prof. Elliot Coues, of the Smithsonian 
Institution, Washington, U. S. : "I have, as 
you know, the keenest interest in the whole 
range of those phenomena which are variously 
labelled 'Spiritualism,' 'theosophy,' 'tele- 
pathy,' ' humbug,' and ' fraud.' I happen to 
be an organism which itself illustrates some 
of them, and I have seen enough besides to 
satisfy me of the actual verity of most of the 
rest of them, let their ' explanation ' be what 
it may. I also think that scientific as well as 
public opinion is just now undergoing such 
modification — I had almost written such a 
revolution — that those who are now called 
respectively ' scientists ' and ' crankists ' are 
likely to change places, with great benefit to 
humanity at large. And as to religion — which 
after all has got to stand with its feet firm on 
the solid ground of nature, if it would rear its 
head to the heaven that is above all human 
ignorance and prejudice — as to religion, I 



Appendix I 225 

repeat, that which is now heterodoxy will the 
more speedily prove orthodoxy, the more 
widely the facts of psychic science are dis- 
seminated and appreciated. The traitor in 
the strongholds of orthodox intolerance is hu- 
man reason acting upon stubborn facts of 
human nature, and the quarrels now going on 
in several of these strongholds are among the 
most cheerful signs of the times ; for the truth 
always comes bringing not peace, but the 
sword, with which to conquer a peace." 

Professors Tornerom and Edland, the 
Swedish physicists: " Only those deny the 
reality of spirit phenomena who have never 
examined them, but profound study alone can 
explain them. We do not know where we 
may be led by the discovery of the cause of 
these, as it seems, trivial occurrences, or to 
what new spheres of Nature's kingdom they 
may open the way; but that they will bring 
forward important results is already made 
clear to us by the revelations of natural his- 
tory in all ages." 

Six years ago F. W. H. Myers, when 
15 



226 Can Telepathy Explain f 

dealing with the appearance of phantasms of 
the dead, said: "As our evidence now stands, 
I find no rational halting-place between our 
smallest experimental transferences from mind 
to mind and apparitions generated by men 
long dead." 

Note. — I have gathered these extracts 
from several sources. But my chief indebt- 
edness is to the London Light. 




APPENDIX II 

A PARTIAL LIST OF THE NAMES OF SUCH PER- 
SONS AS HAVE BELIEVED IN THE EXIST- 
ENCE OF A SPIRITUAL WORLD AND OF AT 
LEAST OCCASIONAL COMMUNICATION BE- 
TWEEN THAT WORLD AND THIS 

I. All the great names in Hebrew history 
from Abraham to Jesus. 

II. All the great names in Christian history 
from Jesus to Luther. 

III. All the great names in the history of 
Egypt. 

IV. All the great names in the history of 
India. 

V. Socrates, Plato, and the greatest names 
of Greece. 

VI. The Greek Church from the beginning. 

VII. The Roman Church from the be- 
ginning. 

227 



228 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

VIII. The great Protestant Churches have 
taught this belief concerning the first Chris- 
tian centuries, and have never denied the 
possibility of communication even in the 
modern world. 

IX. All Swedenborgian Churches hold that 
it is possible but may be dangerous. 

X. Some modern names: 

W. F. Barrett, F.R.S., Professor of Phy- 
sics in the Royal College of Science, Dublin. 

Gustav T. Fechner, Professor of Physics 
in the University of Leipsic. 

Lord Rayleigh, F.R.S., formerly Professor 
of Physics in the University of Cambridge. 

Prof. Scheibner, Teacher of Mathematics 
in the University of Leipsic. 

W. E. Weber, Professor of Physics in the 
University of Gottenburg. 

Franz Hoffman, Professor of Philosophy, 
Wurtzburg University. 

Prof. Wagner, Geologist, University of 
Russia. 

Prof. Butler, Chemist, of Russia. 

Prof. F. Zollner, Leipsic, author of Tran- 
scendeiital Physics. 



Appendix II 229 

Prof. Nees von Esenbek, President of the 
Royal Academy of Sciences, Germany. 

Benjamin F. Wade, of Ohio, United States 
Senator. 

Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. 

Alfred Tennyson. 

Mrs. Browning. 

Oliver Johnson, former editor of the Chris- 
tian Union. 

Joseph Jefferson. 

M. Thiers, ex-President of France. 

Dr. Robert Chambers. 

Hiram Powers, the sculptor. 

Lord Dunraven. 

Hon. Alexander Aksakoff, Imperial Coun- 
cil, St. Petersburg. 

William Lloyd Garrison. 

Richard Hodgson, Secretary Society for 
Psychical Research, Boston. 

Judge John W. Edmonds, of New York. 

James H. Hyslop, Professor of Logic and 
Mental Science, Columbia University, N. Y. 

W. T. Stead, editor of the Review of Re- 
views. 

Queen Victoria. 



230 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

Emperor Napoleon. 

Empress Eugenie. 

Sir William Crookes, F.R.S. 

Sir Oliver Lodge, F.R.S. 

Alfred Russel Wallace. 

Gerald Massey. 

Prof. William Denton. 

Prof. Winchell, Government Geologist. 

Prof. Elliott Coues. 

Prof. S. B. Brittain, of New York. 

Hon. Joshua R. Giddings. 

Hon. Thaddeus Stevens. 

Abraham Lincoln. 

The parents of General Grant. 

Rev. R. Heber Newton, D.D., of New 
York. 

Mary A. Livermore. 

Anna Dickinson. 

Lizzie Doten. 

Victor Hugo. 

W. M. Thackeray. 

Emilio Castelar, the Spanish patriot. 

Hon. George Thompson, the bosom friend 
of Garrison. 
Captain R. F. Burton, the famous traveller. 



Appendix II 231 

Bayard Taylor. 

Rev. John Pierpont, of Boston. 

Epes Sargent, author and scientist. 

Dr. Kane, the Arctic explorer. 

Countess of Caithness. 

Lady Cowper. 

Baron and Baroness Von Vay. 

H. I. H. Nicholas, Duke of Leuchtenberg. 

H. S. H. Prince George of Solms. 

Prof. Alexander Wilder, M.D. 

W. Emmette Coleman, writer, author, and 
Orientalist. 

C. F. Varley, F.R.S., C.E. 

Dr. Lockhart Robertson. 

Dr. J. Elliotson, F.R.S. 

Prof. De Morgan, sometime President of 
the Mathematical Society of London. 

Dr. Wm. Gregory, F.R.S.E., sometime 
Professor of Chemistry in the University of 
Edinburgh. 

Dr. Ashburner. 

Dr. Herbert Mayo, F.R.S. 

Prof. Perty, of Berne. 

Professors Hare and Mapes, U. S. A. 

T. A. Trollope. 



232 Can Telepathy Explain? 

S. C. Hall, twenty-five years editor Art 
Journal, London. 
Prof. Cassal, LL.D. 
Lord Brougham. 
Lord Lyndhurst. 
Archbishop Whately. 
Nassau Senior. 
William Howitt. 
Serjeant Cox. 
Hon. Roden Noel. 

Victorien Sardou, the great dramatist. 
Bishop Clark, Rhode Island, U. S. A. 
Hon. R. Dale Owen, U. S. A. 
Baron Du Potet. 
Count A. de Gasparin. 
Baron L. de Guldenstiibbe. 
Camille Flammarion. 
Harriet Beecher Stowe. 
Rev. Charles Beecher. 
John Greenleaf Whittier. 
Joseph Hooker, Esq., Hartford. 
Isabella Beecher Hooker, his wife. 
Gail Hamilton — Miss Dodge. 
Rev. Geo. H. Hepworth. 



APPENDIX III 

A PARTIAL LIST OF BOOKS 

Spiritual Manifestations. By Charles 
Beecher. 

Visions. By Dr. Edward H. Clarke. 

Do the Dead Return ? A Record of Ex- 
periences in Spiritualism. By a Clergyman 
of the Church of England. 

Man and the Spiritual World. By a Clergy- 
man of the Church of England. 

Biogen. A Speculation on the Origin and 
Nature of Life. By Prof. Elliott Coues. 

Signs of the Times from the Standpoint of the 
Scientist. By Prof. Elliott Coues. 

Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism. 
By Sir William Crookes, F. R. S. 

Mollie Fancher. Dailey. 

From Matter to Spirit. By Mrs. De 
233 



234 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

Morgan. (An early work, strongly to be 
recommended; with a valuable preface by 
the late Professor De Morgan.) 

Budget of Paradoxes. By Professor De 
Morgan. 

Psychic Philosophy as the Foundation of a 
Religion of Natural Law. By V. C. Desertis. 
With Introductory Note by Alfred Russel 
Wallace. 

Philosophy of Mysticism. (Vols. I. and II.) 
Translated by C. C. Massey. By Carl du 
Prel. 

Letters and Tracts on Spiritualism. By 
Judge Edmonds. 

The Unknown. Camille Flammarion. 

Phantasms of the Living. (Vols. I. and II.) 
By E. Gurney, M.A., F. W. H. Myers, 
M.A., and F. Podmore, M.A. 

Lncidents in My Life. (Two vols.) By 
D. D. Home. (Vol. I. contains facts in the 
life of a remarkable medium.) 

D. D. Home : His Life and Mission. By 
his Widow. (An account of a very strange 
life, with records of facts, and abundant testi- 
mony from well-known persons.) 



Appendix III 235 

The Gift of D. D. Home. By his Widow. 

Proceedings S. P. R. Part XXXIII., Vol. 
XIII., Feb., 1898. Hodgson. 

Death a Delusion. By Rev. J. Page Hopps. 

History of the Supernatural. (Vols. I. and 
II.). By William Howitt. 

Hudson's The Law of Psychic Phenomena. 

Proceedings S. P. R. Part XLL, Vol. 
XVI., Oct., 1901. Hyslop. 

Marie M. King's Principles of Nature. 

Address of Dr. Oliver Lodge. Proceedings 
S. P. R. PartXLIIL, Vol. XVII., March, 
1902. 

Concerning Spiritualism. By Gerald Massey. 

Human Personality and its Survival of 
Bodily Death. By F. W. H. Myers. 

Debatable Land between this World and the 
Next. By R. Dale Owen. 

Footfalls on the Boundary of Another 
World. By R. Dale Owen. 

Beyond the Gates. By E. Stuart Phelps. 

Gates Ajar. By E. Stuart Phelps. 

Apparitions and Thought- Transference. An 
Examination of the Evidence for Telepathy. 
By Frank Podmore, M.A. 



236 Can Telepathy Explain? 

History of Spiritualism. By Frank Pod- 
more, M.A. 

Real Ghost Stories. A Revised Reprint of 
the Christmas and New Year numbers of the 
Revieiv of Reviews , 1 8 9 1 - 2 . 

Defence of Modem Spiritualism. By A. R. 
Wallace, F.R.S. With American Preface by 
Epes Sargent. 

Planchette ; or, the Despair of Science. 
Being a Full Account of Modern Spiritualism. 
By Epes Sargent. 

Scientific Basis of Spiritualism. By Epes 
Sargent. 

Can Telepathy Explain? By Minot J. Sav- 
age. 

Life Beyond Death. By Minot J. Savage. 

Psychics : Facts and Theories. By Minot 
J. Savage. 

Higher Aspects of Spiritualism. By W. 
Stainton-Moses (M.A., Oxon). 

Psychography. A Treatise on one of the 
Objective Forms of Psychic Phenomena. By 
W. Stainton-Moses (M.A., Oxon). 

Spirit Identity. By W. Stainton-Moses 
(M.A., Oxon). 



Appendix III 237 

Spirit Teachings. Through the Medium- 
ship of William Stainton - Moses (M.A., 
Oxon). Memorial Edition, with Portrait of 
the author. 

Letters from Julia. A Series of Letters as 
to the Life Beyond the Grave, received by 
Automatic Writing from one who has gone 
before. Through W. T. Stead. 

The Unseen Universe. Stewart and Tait. 

In Distance and in Dream. Sweetser. 

Automatic or Spirit Writing. With other 
Psychic Experiences. By Sara A. Under- 
wood. With Introduction by B. F. Under- 
wood. 

After Her Death. By Lilian Whiting. 

A Study of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
By Lilian Whiting. 

If a Man Die, Shall He Live Again ? A 
Lecture by Prof. Alfred R. Wallace. 

On Miracles and Mode?'n Spiritualism. 
By Alfred R. Wallace, F.R.S., F.Z.S., 
etc. 

Fact and Fable in Psychology. Jastrow. 

From India to the Planet Mars. Flour- 
noy. 



238 Can Telepathy Explain? 

Spiritualism and Christianity (an address). 
By Rev. H. R. Haweis. 

Note. — Nearly all of these books are in 
favor of the spiritistic theory. By giving 
them here I am not saying that I endorse 
them all. This incomplete list is offered as 
an easy way of answering many questions. 




APPENDIX IV 



Extract from The Coming -Day, a religious 
magazine edited by Rev. John Page Hopps, 
of London: 

"The Use of Spiritualism. — A bright 
young American minister, who has thought 
his way from Methodism to Spiritualism (the 
Rev. B. F. Austin, B.A.), lately gave the fol- 
lowing practical answer to the question, ' But 
what good is there in Spiritualism ? ' : 

" ' i. Spiritualism supersedes the old and 
effete conceptions of Truth, and supplies us 
with new and more rational views of man, 
nature, God, and the future life. 

" ' 2. Spiritualism by its theory and demon- 
stration of Spirit Communion furnishes a Key 
for the interpretation of all religions and all 
Bibles. 

239 



240 Can Telepathy Explain f 

" ' 3. Spiritualism presents to men the 
highest ethical standard known to the world. 

" ' 4. Spiritualism offers the nectar of 
Divine Consolation to the sick, suffering, 
bereaved among men. 

"'5. Spiritualism furnishes the world its 
only demonstration of the continuity of life. 

" ' 6. Spiritualism presents to the world 
the noblest Optimism ever taught humanity.' 

We quite agree with friend Austin. 

Extract from the London Light : 

" ' Dr. Dean Clark gives, in The Sermon, 
the following useful exposition of ' What 
Spiritualism has proved ' : 

" ' 1. That man is essentially a spirit. 

" ' 2. That death is the resurrection of man 
from his outward body. 

" ' 3. That he is governed in both worlds by 
Nature's Laws, which are never suspended. 

" ' 4. That all " Special Providences " are 
the acts of finite spirits : God always manifests 
through universal Law. 

" ' 5. That all special Inspiration is the psy- 
chologic action of individual spirit quickening 



Appendix IV 241 

the mind of the mortal said to be " inspired." 

"'6. That all spirit manifestations are 
natural not " supernatural." 

" ' 7. That all Bibles are the Word of Man 
— Nature is the only " Word of God." 

" ' 8. That it is both the nature and destiny 
of man to progress eternally. 

" ' 9. That compensation for good acts and 
retribution for evil deeds are the natural re- 
sults of the deeds themselves, and are no 
special rewards or punishments. Happiness 
is the fruit of obedience, misery of disobedi- 
ence of Law.' 

These are given as indicating the general 
religious position of some believers in ' ' Spir- 
itualism." 

II. RELIGIOUS IMPLICATIONS OF SPIRITISM 

The question is frequently asked as to what 
are the general religious teachings which are 
given by the claimed communications from 
the other world. It may be worth while, 
then, to indicate them in brief outline. 



242 Can Telepathy Explain ? 

1. God as Infinite Spirit whose perfect 
justice is perfect love. 

2. Death, not as an invasion of evil from 
without, nor as the result of divine anger or 
human sin, but as a part of God's universal 
and eternal order. 

3. The natural immortality of all souls. 

4. Cause and effect as universal and eternal. 

5. Character and destiny under the law of 
cause and effect; so results take the place of 
arbitrary reward and punishment. 

6. Souls enter the next life what they are, 
and go up or down as they will. But all will 
ultimately go up, because they will see and 
understand the necessary conditions for the 
attainment of good and consequent happiness. 

7. Revelation natural and universal, — God 
coming into brain and heart and character as 
fast and as far as human experience makes 
way for Him. All Bibles contain revelation, 
but none of them are infallible. Revelation 
is progressive and eternal. 

8. Jesus and all the great Revealers, 
Prophets, Seers, and Teachers were Sons of 
God, as all men may be, but transcending the 



Appendix IV 243 

ordinary levels of life as the mountains out- 
tower the plains. They have come to teach 
men spiritual truth and to lift up and lead on 
the world. 

9. If true to their mission, the churches, 
as religious associations, are the most impor- 
tant in the world, because they teach men the 
most important of all things, — how to think 
and live. 

10. Universal brotherhood and service as 
the highest law of life. 

11. Peace, the uplifting of womanhood, 
mutual help, industry, independence, and uni- 
versal hope, here and hereafter. 

This brief outline is given, not as a personal 
creed, but as indicating what appear to be 
certain general tendencies of thought on the 
part of those who believe in a spiritual world 
and the possibility of communication between 
that world and this. 

THE END 



By Minot J. Savage 

LIFE BEYOND DEATH. 

Being a Review of the World's Beliefs on the subject, & 
Consideration of Present Conditions of Thought and Feeling, 
Leading to the Question as to whether it can be Demon- 
strated as a Fact. To which is added an Appendix Containing 
Some Hints as to Personal Experiences and Opinions. 8°, 

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putting profound problems into every-day language. He states the issues 
and dilemmas of present thought with remarkable clearness, and with as 
much boldness as clearness, challenging every mental temper except cour- 
age and intelligent thinking. These are rare qualities, and ought to give 
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Register. 

THE PASSING AND THE PERMANENT IN 
RELIGION. 

Uniform with " Life Beyond Death." 8° . $1.35 net 
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"Dr. Savage devotes the first chapter to pointing out the accidental and 
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In the chapter on Theologies and Theology it is shown that theology, like 
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as man feels and loves, he will be religious ; so long as he thinks, he 
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ligion and life are one, at the heart of the world. Man is, as Darwin 
says, the result of evolution, which process, however, is destined to carry 
him on to his ideal, which is the likeness of God. An interesting chapter 
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giving a poetic idea of the true nature of hell, are quoted : 
Heaven but the vision of fulfilled desire, 
And hell the shadow of a soul on fire." 

Commercial A dvet-tiser, 

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"The book is a great book, and cannot fail to exercise a 
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" It is a book of very exceptional value, Prof. Ramsay is a real scholar and of 
the very best type of scholarship. A thoroughly good book ; a product of first- 
hand and accurate scholarship ; in the highest degree suggestive ; and not only 
valuable in its results, but an admirable example of the true method of research. 
— The Churchman. 

ST. PAUL THE TRAVELLER AND THE 
ROMAN CITIZEN. 

With Map, 8vo $3.00 

" A work which marks an important step in advance in the historical inter- 
pretation of St. Paul. . . . It is an immense gain to have the narrative 
lifted from the mean function of being an artful monument and mirror of 
a strife internal to Christianity which it seeks by a process, now of creation, 
now of elimination, to overcome and to conceal, to the high purpose of 
representing the religion as it began within the Empire and as it actually was to 
the Empire and the Empire to it. . . . Professor Ramsay has made a solid 
and valuable contribution to the interpretation of the Apostolic literature and of 
the Apostolic age — a contribution distinguished no less by ripe scholarship, in- 
dependent judgment, keen vision, and easy mastery of material, than by fresh- 
ness of thought, boldness of combination, and striking originality of view."^ 
The Speaker. 

IMPRESSIONS OF TURKEY DURING 
TWELVE YEARS' WANDERINGS. 

8vo $1.75 

" No conception of the real status of Turkey is possible unless something is 
■Understood of ' the interlacing and alternation of the separate and unblending 
faces.' . . . Such an understanding is admirably presented in Prof. Ramsay's 
book, which gives a near and trustworthy insight into actual Turkish conditions." 
— N. Y. Times. 

WAS CHRIST BORN AT BETHLEHEM? 

A Study in the Credibility of St. Luke. Part I. The Importance of 
the Problem. Part II. The Solution of the Problem. 8vo, $1.75 

" The work is one of which students of biblical criticism will need to take account. 
It is absolutely candid and straightforward, thorough and discriminating, and 
courteous to other scholars whose conclusions it sees most reason to condemn. 
It is a fine piece of work." — The Congregationalist. 

HISTORICAL COMMENTARY UPON THE 
EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 

8vo . . . . . " . . . . $3-00 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London. 








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